


Fated

by kordelicious



Category: Fifth Harmony (Band)
Genre: College, F/F, High School, Pining, Romance, frineds to lovers, hurt comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 05:45:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8151158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kordelicious/pseuds/kordelicious
Summary: Camila and Lauren growing up together and falling in love a friends to lovers au





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally the first time ive written such a huge oneshot, im screaming and also kinda proud of myself? it's also my first proper camren fanfic and hopefully there'll be many more to come.
> 
> i've proofread it but im only human so excuse any mistakes.
> 
> i dont own anything
> 
> enjoy x

Fated

It is raining outside, the rain splattering against the window of Casey Blake’s window, almost loud enough to drown out the shrieks and laughs of the preteens huddled in a circle in the middle of the room.

The air is almost suffocating with the smell of chips, popcorn and whatever else garbage food those nine 8thgraders—five boys and four girls—had brought over. 

Somehow Lauren got robbed into playing this ridiculous game where the bottle is spun and the first pair it lands on have to go into Casey’s closet and do whatever they want for seven minutes. 

7 minutes of heaven and its scandalous enough for a group of 13 year olds to have them all blushing and giggling except Lauren. 

The bottle spins and it lands on Austin Mahone. Nearly all the girls seem to sit up a bit straighter, even Camila who’s sitting next to Lauren and Lauren is surprised when the bottle lands on Camila. She looks at her friend and finds a red blush high on her cheeks, her brown doe eyes spilled wide, fingers curling in her dress.

The boys hoot and the girls giggle. Jessy Lee looks jealous and Austin Mahone is smirking.

“You don’t have to do this,” Lauren says. She thinks this is ridiculous. Camila has always talked about how she wanted her first kiss to be a big, romantic thing. Kissing a dirty middle-school boy with breath that stinks of sour cream and onion chips is the least romantic thing Lauren can think of.

Everyone is persistent.

“Of course she has to do it!” Casey exclaims. She’s always been bossy and Lauren has to wonder why she let herself get dragged to this stupid party.“That’s the rules. You can’t break the rules, Camila.”

“It’s _Cameela_ ,” Lauren corrects her irritated. They’ve gone to school together for 8 years and for some reason, Casey still insist on pronouncing Camila’s name wrong. While Camila doesn’t seem to mind, it’s one of the things that can really grate on Lauren’s nerves.

She looks at Camila who looks younger than she is—more than she usually does—with her pretty, polka doted bow in her silky hair and her pretty dress, the one she’d specifically bought for this party.

Austin Mahone has gotten to his feet with that cocky smile of his and he holds a hand out for Camila. Camila blushes harder and Lauren knows she has a crush on the boy. Lately, she hasn’t done anything but talk Lauren’s ears off with _Austin this_ and _Austin that_. 

Camila slips her hand into his and they disappear into the closet.

That’s how Camila gets her first kiss _and_ her first boyfriend.

 

Lauren has always disliked Austin—he’s that one obnoxious, white boy from your class who’s constantly doing some annoying shit to get attention. Her dislike for him increases tenfold when he becomes Camila’s boyfriend. In her humble opinion, Austin Mahone doesn’t deserve Camila—she’s made of everything sweet and bright while Austin is the incarnation of everything wrong with a middle school boy; immature, annoying cocky. The list goes on.

But Camila doesn’t see that.

“He’s actually really sweet, if you’d only give him a chance and get to know him,” she says to Lauren one day after school when they get to Lauren’s house and raid the fridge. 

Lauren is skeptical.

Then Austin goes and confirms every negative opinion Lauren has of him; he goes with his stupid, big chapped mouth and boasts to his stupid little friends that he’s had sex with Camila. _Two weeks_ after they get together.

Camila is shocked and upset and when she confronts Austin, the whole thing ends in a breakup. Of course Lauren is there as a good friend to dry the seemingly endless stream of tears off Camila’s cheeks, run to the nearest shop and get her favorite icecream, swaddle her in blankets and put on her favorite Disney movies. 

Lauren also punches the living daylight out of Austin Mahone and ends up with a weeks’ worth of detention. 

It’s worth it.

ii.

Lauren meets Camila on a bright summer day when they are five year olds on a playground a few blocks from her house.

Lauren is sitting in the middle of the sandpit, sand all over her pretty purple dress and in her tiny pigtails but she doesn’t care because she’s in the middle of building a whole city of sandcastles. She’s been at it for a while now and luckily, she’s had the sandpit to herself so she hasn’t been interrupted by anyone.

Her father is sitting a few feet away, face hidden away behind the newspaper he’s deeply engrossed in. Which is probably why he doesn’t see a couple of seven-year-old boys join his little girl in the sandpit.

Lauren looks at them and wriggles her nose a little dismayed because she’s making sandcastles and she doesn’t want them to be ruined by anyone. The little boys look at her creations and they don’t look half as impressed as they should.

“What are you doing?” one of them asks, or sniffles, he has a runny nose and Lauren knows that she’ll have a runny nose too if he comes to close. She leans a little away.

“I’m making sandcastles!” she proclaims proudly and gestures to her work.

The other boy huffs. “They’re ugly!”

Lauren is hurt and she pouts, “No, they’re not!”

“They are!

“Are not!”

“They are!”

“Are not!” 

The next second, the boys a stomping on her sandcastles and Lauren’s eyes are wide with horror as she watches her hard work crumble away. Her eyes are glassy with tears and her bottom lips quiver.

“Hey! Leave her alone!” Suddenly there’s a blur of screaming pink as someone else crawls into the sandpit. It’s a girl with pink _everything_ , all the way down to her socks and she’s _so small_ ; so smaller than the boys but it doesn’t stop her from standing up against the boys, glaring at them, seemingly trying to make herself bigger than she actually is.

“We won’t,” one boy snickers, “What are you gonna do about it?”

The little pink girl reaches down and takes two fistful of sands which she flings right into the faces of the boys. The boys shriek as the sand gets in their eyes and they stumble back until they fall right out of the sandpit. The girl doesn’t stop until they’re running away to their mommies, crying and red eyed from the sand.

Once they’re gone, the girl turns to look at Lauren. She suddenly looks shy, fiddling with her fingers and blinking at Lauren.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “Boys are stupid.”

Lauren just stares at her for the better part of the minute, amazed that such a small girl could send those big meanies running off, crying. She thinks this girl looks a bit like a princess, she also thinks she’s found her new hero.

“Thanks,” she says eventually.

The girl just smiles and Lauren looks down at her ruined sandcastles, her eyes growing big and sad again. The girl crouches down next to her.

“Can I help you make them again?” she asks sweetly and smiles toothily at her.

Lauren rubs her smalls fists into her eyes to drive away the itchiness and urge to cry because she wants to be as brave as this little girl. She takes a deep breath and finds a smile, nodding eagerly at the girl.

The girl brightens up and sits down in the sand with her, also not caring that she gets sand in her pretty, pink tutu.

“I’m Camila,” she says with a soft laugh as she begins to shovel sand into a plastic bucket.

“Lauren.”

iii.

Times move faster and before Lauren can blink, they’re freshmen in high school.

Times move and things slowly change. And Lauren’s out wearing nothing but shades of grey, the only splash of color to her wardrobe the bright red lipstick she becomes so fond of. Her boots are leather and scuffed and she finds herself struggling to be on time, in school, with her assignments, in general and sometimes—most times—she gets into fights with stupid boys.

Camila is bright and a million shades of color to reflect her huge personality with her pastel colors and frills and bows and lace and sometimes she wears high heels even though she always ends with her face against the pavement. _“the higher the heels, the closer to God,”_ becomes her motivation to not stop trying until she isn’t tripping over thin air. Camila is all color coordinated notes and pink pens and little heart over the i’s.

Some things change, but some things stay the same.

Camila is still the one to attempt to wake her up in the morning and sometimes it works and they walk to school together. And they still walk home together and hang out at each other’s houses. They have new friends but they’re still each other’s best friends and while things change that something not even time will change.

They’re currently parked out at Caramel Café after school attempting to get their latest history assignment done. The café is a quaint little thing tucked away at the corner of the street, cozy with its flannel draped couches and warm lighting. 

Camila and her have been coming to this café since they were old enough to carry their own money and it have since become _their spot_ —unspoken as it was. The best part of the place is that it is far away from the regular place their peers preferred to hang out after school hours. Here in the Caramel Café the customers are all familiar faces, from the nice widowed elder man who always buys them strawberry scones to the hipster who spends countless of hours on his Macbook and the couple of new moms—Asheligh and Kaycee—who gossip in a corner.

Camila calls the place romantic.

Said girl is also currently trying to stiff her giggles, eyes on the phone with the ridiculous banana printed case in her hands.

“Hey!” Lauren protests and tries to swipe the phone out of Camila’s hands but Camila is fast to avoid her grabby hands. “We said no phones for the next 30 minutes!”

Camila giggles again and looks up at her. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I was going to answer a text from my mom, _I swear_ ,” she adds when Lauren levels her with a skeptical look, “but my thumb slipped and I stumbled upon this really funny—“

“Your thumb seems to slip an awfully lot lately, Camz,” Lauren says dryly, because seriously? It was perhaps the fifth time within the last ten minutes, “Perhaps you should have a serious word with it.”

Camila snorts. “Look at this,” she says and turn the screen towards Lauren. And really, she shouldn’t be surprised when she sees a picture of two cats, one is white with dark fur underneath its nose that makes it look like it has a toothbrush mustache and along with the sweeping black fur above it eyes, it looks suspiciously like Hitler.

“So, Meowseph Stalin, we meet again,” Lauren reads out loud what the Hitler cat says to the other cat, who has a moustache and a narrow-eyed look that indeed makes it bear resemblance to the ruthless Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin.

“Indeed Kitler…Indeed,” Camila says the words printed next to Meowseph Stalin in a somber voice but then she cracks up immediately after. “Isn’t it hilarious?”

Lauren smiles and rolls her eyes. “Hysterical.”

Camila grins. “I say this counts as studying.”

Lauren raises a brow. “How so?”

“Well, I know it motivated me to finish up this paper!”

“Yep, nothing motivates you like the cat incarnation of bloodlusty, 20th century dictators.”

“Except the Pokémon theme song,” Camila points out. 

Lauren indulges her and hums the song and Camila’s face brightens.

“I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!” She bursts out a little too loudly, but like Lauren, the customers at Caramel Café have all but gotten used to Camila’s impromptu singing. 

Camila’s eyes flashes and she grins as she continues, “I will ace this paper! To study is my cause!” She looks absolutely pleased with herself, “I will travel across the books, searching far and wide!” she grabs her history book and dramatically flips through its page.

Lauren tries hard to maintain a poker face but her façade quickly cracks and she laughs, dragging a hand down her face, shaking her head.

“Oh God,” she mutters, knowing there’s no stopping Camila when she really gets going.

“It’s time for me to understand, the knowledge that’s insiiiiide!” And Camila actually has a really nice voice, unique in its own way but people are beginning to look annoyed and Lauren doesn’t want to be banned from her favorite place so she reaches out and presses her palm against Camila’s mouth.

“Shut up, you dork.”

Of course, because she’s Camila, she licks Lauren’s palm but Lauren is so used to this, she barely reacts. She dries her palm on her jeans and rises to her feet.

“I’m gonna get a new drink,” she says. “Do you want anything?”

“Yes! Can you get me a couple of raspberry danishes and hot chocolate. I need the energy!”

And Lauren kind of regrets asking because Camila is a bottomless pit and the only thing she does is to drain Lauren’s wallet. Lauren seriously doesn’t know how she manages to stay that small and skinny. Fast metabolism or something, probably.

“Camila, you just ate your own _and_ my—“

“Pretty please?” Camila says, clasping her fingers under her chin and gives Lauren ridiculous big, puppy eyes with her bottom lip tutting out. That look has worked on a lot of people, young and old, but if Camila thinks she can use her little trick on Lauren then she’s wrong. Because Lauren won’t fall for that. Nope she won’t.

Lauren lets out an exasperated sigh, “You’re lucky I love you,” she grumbles and makes her way to the counter, ignoring Camila’s “And I love you! To infinity and beyond! Forever and ever and ever—“

Lauren rolls her eyes so hard that it actually hurts, but there’s a fond smile tugging at the corner of her lips, not that she’d let Camila see it. (Even though Camila probably knows).

Rosita is at the counter. A hearty, plump woman in her forties that has been working at this café ever since her and Camila discovered it many years ago. She smells like pastries and coffee and radiates warmth with her ever present smile and thick Spanish accent.

“Hey chica,” she says warmly when Lauren comes up to the counters, “How’s it going with the school work?”

Lauren sighs dramatically and glances back at Camila who’s engrossed in her phone. “You know, the usual…”

Rosita chuckles knowingly. “Ah, you two girls never change, you always come here and never get much done,” she says, “but you two girls have to work harder, you’re no longer little girls and soon enough you’ll be going to college. No time for slacking around.”

This is quite normal. Rosita trying to knock some sense into Camila and her and Lauren knows it comes from a place of caring about them and wanting the best for them. Quite often, both her and Camila comes to Rosita for advice when they feel like they can’t find it anywhere else.

“I promise we’ll work hard,” Lauren says with a wink and Rosita is about to say something but both their attentions are claimed by something crashing. It’s first then that Lauren notices the boy by the dough mixer. He’s standing there, looking absolutely terrified with the bowl on the floor and flour covering the area around his feet.

“Ay, what now?” Rosita exclaims in exasperation.

“Uh, uh, I’m sorry! I don’t know what happened—“ the boy stutters, eyes wide behind his glasses.

“Don’t just stand there, chico,” Rosita says and the boy nods and scurries around frantically.

“New?” Lauren asks with a raised brow even though it’s fairly obvious; she’s never seen him here before.

Rosita sighs. “That boy is so clumsy. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Most people would probably have fired him, but Lauren knows Rosita well enough to know that she’ll be patient but stern when whipping the boy into shape; Lauren already feels sorry for the kid, because Rosita has all the qualities of a scary Latina mama.

She places her orders and returns to her table.

“There’s a new kid working here,” she says as she slides into her seat and Camila’s face immediately whip towards the counter, eyes wide and curious.

“Oh really?” They catch glimpses of him as he goes back and forth behind the counter and Camila’s eyes widen a tad more.

“Oh,” she says and Lauren knows that look on her face, “He’s kinda cute, isn’t he?”

Lauren shrugs, unimpressed. “I suppose.”

“Oh God, he _is_ cute!”

Lauren looks up at Camila who’s stealing glances at the boy and she’s suddenly got a bad feeling about this.

The dreadful feeling is confirmed when none other than New Kid comes with their drinks and pastries. He’s still flustered and looks nervous, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing and is going to screw up any moment.

“A latté and frappucino and raspberry danishes,” he lists off, his name tag says Thomas and Lauren can’t help but think it’s such a boring white boy’s name. 

“Thank you!” Camila says brightly.

Thomas turns to look at her and his eyes turn wide and round, cheeks flushing and somehow manages to knock over the stack of napkins.

“I-I’m sorry,” he squeaks and bends down to retrieve them from where they’ve scattered on the floor; he nervously throws a few glances at the counter, doubtlessly scared that Rosita will catch him fucking up again.

“Oh, no problem at all,” Camila says as she bends down and help him scoop up the napkins. “You must be new here.”

“Uh, uh yeah, I’m Thomas,” he says and sounds embarrassed.

“Camila,” she replies sweetly and he looks at her again and then he just sort of stares at her with that look in his eyes and those red cheeks that has Lauren wanting to smack her forehead against the table. She refuses to believe what she thinks is happening is actually happening.

Thomas looks positively star struck and Lauren supposes she can’t blame him because Camila looks cute in her polka-dotted, white strapless summer dress and lace bow in her long, dark hair.

“Nice to meet you,” Camila says, “And don’t worry about this. Don’t let Rosita get you down, you’ll get the hang of it in no time, I’m sure!”

Thomas smiles and Lauren supposes he looks sweet enough with his floppy brown hair and puppy eyes, in a nerdy way perhaps.

“Thank you,” he says. “And nice to meet you too.”

Camila beams. “You know, we’re going to see _a lot_ of each other because Lauren,” she gestures to said girl, “And I come here all the time. I’m sure we’ll get to know each other.”

Thomas nods, smile widening, “That’s…cool.”

“Yeah?” Camila grins, “Because I’d love to get to know you.”

Lauren stares disbelievingly at Camila. It’s really nothing new, because as long as Lauren has known Camila, the girl has been a charming, natural flirt—which she vehemently denies when accused of, because she’s convinced she’s awkward. Which, she honestly kind of is, but it only adds to her charm.

And _boy_ , does Thomas look charmed. “I…me too. I mean, I’d love to get to know you as well.”

Before Camila can respond, there’s a sharp “Thomas!” and he scurries off.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Lauren blurts, “You’ve _got_ to be kidding me, Camz.”

Camila looks at her innocently. “What?”

“You were flirting with that guy!”

“I was _not_ ,” Camila protests through a mouthful of danishes, “I was just being nice. He’s sweet, don’t you think?”

Lauren narrows her eyes. “You’re interested?”

Camila shrugs. “Do you think he’s interested?”

Lauren rolls her eyes, because here they go again. “He was practically stumbling over his words, so yeah, he’s probably interested,”

“My own little coffee shop au,” Camila says with a soft sigh and rests her face against the palm of her hand, eyes round and dreamy. “It’s _so_ romantic.”

Lauren lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Yeah, all you need to do now is leave your number on a napkin,” she says and it’s entirely sarcastic but Camila’s whole face brightens up at the idea.

“Oh my God, Lauren!” She exclaims, “That’s _brilliant_!”

“Wait what—“ But Camila has already grabbed a napkin and Lauren watches as she scribbles down a message along with her phone number.

_I have a feeling this is gonna keep being my favorite place for a long time :)_

Lauren slumps into her chair and looks towards the ceiling, “Help me God,” she mutters.

And that’s how it begins.

 

Suddenly it’s no longer _Lauren &Camila_ but _Lauren &Camil&alsoThomas_ and Lauren is a whole lot of bitter because she hasn’t been forced to share Camila for a while and now she doesn’t only have to share Camila but share her favorite spot as well.

Thomas is a sweet enough kid, Lauren admits grudgingly, albeit a little too shy and nerdy. He’s not cocky fuckboy like Austin Mahone had been so Lauren supposes it could’ve been worse.

Thomas goes to Northwest High and is obsessed with Harry Potter and before Lauren knows of it, Camila is obsessed with Harry Potter too and Lauren is getting roped into a Harry Potter Marathon.

And the thing is, in the first few weeks Camila looks absolutely endeared by Thomas because he gives her flowers and gets passionate about the things he loves and Camila hasn’t had to pay for a thing at the café since they got together. And Lauren’s wallet sighs a sigh of relief and in absolutely no way does she miss paying for Camila’s insatiable appetite. Not really. Maybe a little. _Whatever_.

She has to suffer through Camila&Thomas insufferable flirting and lingering gazes across the café and if Camila was distracted from work before, she certainly never gets anything done now.

But then the second month of Camila&Thomas rolls around and suddenly they aren’t hanging out so much and Camila forgets more meetings with her boyfriend than what’s healthy for their relationships and lately, Thomas looks annoyed when Lauren is still always there, never too far away, as if she’s Camila’s shadow. And then slowly but surely, Camila finds excuses for them to hang out anywhere but at the café and really, Lauren doesn’t mind because lately the café hasn’t felt like their own.

One day they’re hanging out at Camila’s house and eating badly made nachos as they watch the latest episode of Games of Thrones. Camila suddenly gasps dramatically but Lauren ignores her, engrossed in the happenings on the screen.

“Lauren!” Camila calls but Lauren narrows her eyes a bit and pointedly continues to ignore her. But of course it’s fucking impossible to ignore Camila, because the next second the girl is tugging at her and then she abruptly smacks a pillow square across Lauren’s face.

“Camz!” Lauren cries and pauses the show before turning on her friend. “ _What_?”

Camila beams at her. “They’ve finally opened the outdoor ice rink,” she says and shoves her phone in Lauren’s phone, too close for Lauren to see anything she’s trying to shows her.

“And?”

“We should go!” 

“I’m gonna take a pass, you know I hate ice skating,” Lauren says and even so, Camila have somehow managed to drag her along year after year. “You should take Thomas.”

Camila suddenly stops bouncing around and grows very still. She lowers her gaze to her fingers. “Well…”

Lauren stares at her. “What is it?”

Camila shrugs and pouts and heaves a deep sigh.

Lauren waits but Camila keeps her eyes down, fiddling with a loose string in her baby blue pajama bottoms.

“I’m dying of suspense,” Lauren says impatiently.

Camila sighs again. “Tommy is a really, _really_ sweet guy, you know? He loves movies and cuddling and he’s a little quirky but that’s what makes him unique. He gets me flowers and I can eat all the pastries I want. He’s good to me.”

Lauren nods, watching her friend. “But?”

Another sigh. Camila chews a bit on the string of her hoodie, “But…I don’t _feel_ anything.” She looks up at Lauren and her doe eyes are wide and guilty.

Lauren sits up straighter and turns to her body towards Camila to show she’s there, she’s listening.

“What do you mean?” she inquires.

Camila pulls her pink lips into her mouth for a minute, shrugs a bit, “Um, I mean. There’s no spark. No butterflies in my stomach when our hands brush and no fireworks when we kiss…I just…I don’t know.”

Lauren’s eyes widen a bit, “Oh poor boy,” Lauren says, sincerely feeling sorry for Thomas, “He’s like, completely lost in you, Camz.”

“I know,” Camila whines, “I know but I don’t think…I’m not in love with him and I don’t know what to do.”

Lauren raises a brow, “Um…how about the obvious? Break up with him. There’s no need to make either of you miserable if it can be helped. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“It’ll break his heart!” Camila gasps and she grips the front of her sweatshirt as if she’s imagining his heartbreak. “I can’t do that to him.”

“So what?” Lauren prompts, “You’re gonna stay with him out of pity. That’s even worse, Camz.”

Camila slumps back against the couch, she hugs her knees against her chest and hides her face in them and like that, she looks so young.

Lauren scoots closer, “Camz,” she says softly and puts her hand on her friend’s knee, “Don’t forget what you always say: your happiness comes before anything else, you’re the most important person to yourself and if you think—“

“I know, I know,” Camila interrupts, “Just…” she sighs, “I’ll figure something out.”

Lauren watches her for a moment. She knows how hard this is for Camila because Camila is too sweet for her own good and more often than not, she puts people before her. It’s something that’s made Lauren extra protective of her; if Camila can’t look out for herself, then Lauren has to do it.

She reaches out and spins a lock of Camila’s hair around her finger, tugging gently. 

“Remember you deserve everything you want, Camz,” Lauren says softly as she plays with Camila’s hair, “You deserve that fairy tale love you’ve always dreamt about, you deserve all the sparks and butterflies and fireworks in the world, you deserve a love that leaves you breathless, a wild, passionate and extraordinary love because God knows there’s too many mediocre shit in life and you only deserve the best.”

Camila looks at her with big, brown eyes and they’re rapidly overflowing with tears. Lauren blinks and the next second she has an armful of Camila as the girl squeezes the living daylight out of her.

“That’s so sweet,” Camila sobs into Lauren’s neck and Lauren wraps her arms around the girl and rubs her back soothingly. “Thank you, Lauren, you deserve everything in the world and more too. I love you so much.”

Lauren laughs softly. “I love you too. I’m always here for you, ok?”

Camila sniffles and nod.

“I’m always here for you too.”

 

It takes a couple of more weeks but it finally happens catalysted by Camila forgetting about Thomas’ birthday and Thomas ends up breaking up with her—Lauren suspects he’d been suspicious and decided to be the first one to break up. Camila feels horrible about the forgotten birthday but they end things on amicable terms.

The best part of the whole thing is that Thomas finds himself a new job and Café Caramel finally feels like their spot again.

 

++++

 

Lauren is 13 when she realizes that she’s gay.

It doesn’t happen suddenly or at once, it’s come creeping in, it’s all the little things that slowly begin to add up.

One of her earliest memories of preferring women over men was when she’d watch all those Disney princess movies and she’d always been a lot more fascinated with the princesses than all the princes.

She was 6 years old when she first watched Aladdin with Camila in one of their countless sleepover, cuddled together on the couch in their matching jammies. Lauren remembers that Aladdin was properly Camila’s first crush and how she wanted to be saved like Jasmine, in contrast, all Lauren could think about was that _she_ wanted to be the one to rescue Jasmine and how she’d love to run her fingers through her shiny, black hair and maybe Jasmine would let her braid it for her.

But she was 6 years old and she’d just learned to spell her name and none of those things mattered. 

When all the girls went from _’eeeew boys!’_ to _’awww boys’_ , Lauren was still perpetually stuck at _ew boys!_. Of course fate would have it that she was best friends with Camila Cabello who’s been a lovesick puppy since _forever_ and Lauren swears she’s almost always crushing on some boy. Lauren would be confused when Camila would point at a boy in 4h grade and go, “he’s so cute, Lauren, don’t you think he’s cute?” and Lauren would just stare blankly at said boy and say, ‘I think I’ve seen him eat his boogers.”

She’s ten years old and she’s hanging out with Camila and a few other girls from their class when they suddenly start to talk about boys and if any of them has ever tried to kiss a boy. They’re giggling and blushing and each and everyone of them is crushing on the new boy with the floppy hair and British accent and Lauren can’t relate at all. Then they’d all turn their big, eager eyes on her and ask her who her crush is, a question Camila had asked her countless time, relentless, and Lauren had just shrugged.

“I don’t know. None of them. I guess.” 

And she almost said that she thought that Cindy Abraham from the class above them was really pretty with her hair that seemed to be spun from fire and her lipglossed lips, but she didn’t because she knew that wasn’t what she was supposed to say.

Puberty descends upon them and suddenly things becomes a little more obvious, like how Lauren can’t stop sneaking glances at the girls in the changing room or how she finds herself staring at Jessica White’s chest because she’s very well-endowed for a 13-year-old girl or how when she watches romantic films with Camila and Camila is fawning over Ryan Gosling, Lauren wants to _be_ Ryan Gosling, wants to be the one passionately kissing Rachel Adams in the pouring rain because Rachel Adams is gorgeous.

Lauren has a distinct memory of standing before a mirror and staring at her awkward, 13 year old self and repeating quietly _”I’m not a dyke. I’m not a dyke. I’m not a dyke.”_ because that’s what the boys in her school called Melanie C from the Spice Girls.

At the time, the denial was enough but it didn’t last long.

 

She’s 13 and a ½ and she’s visiting her father in Orlando. They’re out in town, buying ice-cream and somehow trying to keep their father-daughter relationship from completely deteriorating; which is hard when you only see your father once in forever when he pulls his shit together.

They’re walking down the towns square and Lauren is enjoying her ice-cream, curiously looking around at the people bustling by when her eyes fall on something unfamiliar. There are two women, perhaps in their late 20s and they’re sitting at an outdoor café, their hands intertwined on top of their table, their heads close as they talk to each other. Lauren thinks it looks romantic, except these are two women. Suddenly they lean in close and share a passionate kiss and Lauren stops up and stares and can’t look away.

Before she can even begin to comprehend what this all means, her father grabs her arm tightly and yanks her forward. Lauren stumbles, tears her eyes away and looks up at her father. Her heart sinks when she sees the pure disgust deep in his narrowed eyes.

“Don’t look at that, Lauren,” he sneers, “How dare they behave so disgustingly in front of everyone. In front of children! I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

“Why?” Lauren blurts before she can stop herself but she’s confused and her heart is racing to the point where it hurts and she doesn’t _understand_. It hadn’t looked wrong or disgusting, she’d thought it had looked beautiful.

Her father turns her towards him, grips her shoulders tightly and looks her hard in the eye.

“It’s an abomination,” he says gravelly and something inside of Lauren breaks, she doesn’t know what, all she knows is the sharp pain. “God created man and woman to be together. Those people have strayed from God’s will. Do you understand?”

The almost hysterical thing is that Lauren’s father is the furthest thing from a religious man, but Lauren doesn’t laugh. Her skin is pale and she taste ash in her mouth as she forces herself nod, numb.

Her father looks satisfied and pats her on the head. He starts talking about what movie they should rent and watch tonight as if he hadn’t just shattered something inside of her. Later that night, when they get home, Lauren fakes a stomach ache and crawls deep under her covers and cries. She cries like she’s never cried before and the tears are endless and she realizes right then, that she likes girls.

She can’t bear to look her father in the eye and they’re only a week into her three week stay when she calls her mother and begs to come home.

Everything feels a bit like a haze the following weeks. A very painful and paranoid haze. She finds herself terrified that people will suddenly find out like its stamped on her forehead in big, rainbow letters. She doesn’t do herself a favor when she goes online and reads horror stories about kids coming out and losing their families and friends in one, fell swoop. She’d die if she lost her mother, no, she’d _definitely_ die if she lost Camila.

The fear of losing her best friend, of Camila ever looking at her with the same eyes as her father looked at those two women, override any and all logic. She becomes over conscious of her own behavior and of course, Camila notices right away.

“Are you getting a cold?” Camila asks one day.

“What?”

“You’re acting strange.”

“I’m not.”

Suddenly she’s avoiding hanging out with Camila, convinced that Camila will figure it out the longer she spends time around Lauren. And perhaps the hurt look on Camila’s face when Lauren shoots her down one too many times is the worst part of it all.

One night, she’s lying in bed, twisting and turning unable to find rest. The clock is creeping towards midnight when she decides that she can’t do this anymore or she’ll will go insane. Before she can stop herself, she grabs her phone and dials Camila.

It’s taken on the last ring, just when Lauren is about to think she missed a bullet and Camila’s groggy voice comes through from the other end.

“Ello?”

Lauren’s breath seems to be stuck in her throat, “Camz?”

“Lauren?” She sounds confused for a second and then she takes a shaky breath, “I just dreamed that I was a waffle and people were chasing me and they caught me and took a bite and then I died. I _died_ Lauren.” She sounds dramatic and like she’s about to cry. It makes Lauren smile because this is the stupid dork that she loves to call her best friend.

A friend she really doesn’t want to lose.

“It was horrible,” Camila rambles on.

Lauren takes a deep breath, “Camz.”

Camila must sense the severity of her tone, “What is it?” she asks.

Lauren hesitates, bites her lip, the worst case scenario flashing through her head.

“Lauren?” she sounds concerned.

Lauren sighs softly. “I know it’s late,” she says, “but…can you meet me at the playground at 5?”

The playground had served as their meet-up spot ever since they met there; it held significance to Lauren, to them both, really.

“Now?” Camila sounds nervous, “It’s in the middle of the night! We could get kidnapped and shipped off to someplace faraway and sold into child slavery and then I’ll never have my first kiss—“

“Camz,” Lauren says again, her voice a little high-pitched.

Camila falls silent. “Meet you there at 5.”

Lauren hangs up and throws herself back on the bed. She stares up at her ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark-stars her mother helped her put there before she grew out of her scared of the dark phase. She knows that whatever happens at that playground, that whatever Camila says will either make her or break her and she’s absolutely shitting her pants.

Camila is there when she gets there, sitting on one of the swings in an oversized hoodie and fluffy shoes, munching on a banana. She looks up when Lauren approaches, smiles and waves.

Lauren waves back, though the smile is a little tight around the edges and takes a seat on the other swing. It creaks when she sits down and she looks around at the playground, illuminated by the street lights and utterly creepy; perhaps coming here hadn’t been the best of her ideas.

“Hey,” she says quietly.

“Hey,” Camila responds and she’s looking at her but Lauren is staring at her feet.

“I’m sorry for dragging you out of your bed,” she apologizes.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Camila shrug. “I don’t mind,” she says easily, “It’s kind of fun actually. Sneaking out in the middle of the night without my parents knowing? I feel like a proper teenager.”

Lauren tries to smile but she can’t because she feels like she might throw up any moment.

Camila is staring at her; she can feel it. “Want a piece of my banana?”

Lauren shakes her head. “No thanks.”

“Lauren?” Something in Camila’s voice makes Lauren lift her head and look at her friend. She’s studying her intently, “Whatever it is…you know you can tell me right? I’m always here for you. You know you can trust me.”

Lauren swallows hard. She pushes her feet into the sand and bites the inside of her cheek.

“I don’t want you to hate me,” she says in a voice barely out above a whisper.

But Camila hears and she sounds offended. “Hate you? That’s impossible!”

Lauren still doesn’t look at her but then Camila gets to her feet and kneels in front of her.

“Lauren,” she says gently, “I could never hate you. Look at me.” Lauren forces herself to meet Camila’s eyes. “You’re my best friend. You’re one of the most important people to me. I’m offended that you think I could hate you. I mean, you’d have to do something _really_ horrible to make me hate you which I doubt you have. I love you, Lauren.”

Lauren doesn’t know what comes over her but suddenly she’s crying. Genuine, from the bottom of her belly sobs. She isn’t that easy of a crier, not like Camila who cries all the time—when she’s happy, excited, sad—but here she is, bawling her eyes out because she doesn’t want to lose Camila.

Warm hands wraps tightly around her and she gets Camila’s hair in her face and her fingers in her hair. 

“Hey…hey…” Camila soothes, “It’s ok…it’s okay…I’m here.”

“C-Camila,” Lauren sobs and she’s embarrassed but she can’t stop, “I’m—I’m…I’m lesbian!”

There it is. Out in the cruel world. Lauren wishes she could grab the words in the air and shove them back in her throat and suffocate on them. Camila pulls back and Lauren holds her breath.

There’s silence for a moment, probably much shorter than Lauren imagines.

Camila is about to say something, but Lauren interrupts her, a waterfall pouring from her lips, “I-I like girls,” she stutters, “I think I’ve liked girls forever but I didn’t know…I was just confused because I didn’t like the boys…they were just all annoying. I’m scared you’ll think I’m weird and stop being my friend. I’m scared people are gonna hate me.”

Camila cups her face and Lauren dares to look at her. There’s no trace of disgust or any other kind of malice to be found in Camila’s eyes, they’re as sweet and gentle as they’ve always been. It feels like a giant weight has been lifted off of Lauren’s chest and she can breathe easier.

“You’ve been my friend for nearly a decade and I’ve always thought you were the coolest person,” Camila says, a giant smile on her lips. “I still think you’re the coolest person alive. And that you like girls doesn’t change that, dummy. You’re still Lauren and Lauren is fucking awesome no matter what—sorry—,” she apologizes for the cursing, “it doesn’t matter what people say or think because love is love and love can never be wrong.”

Lauren cries harder if possible because this is better than the best case scenario that she’d imagined in her head and suddenly everything doesn’t seem to be crumbling down around her.

“My dad,” she hiccups, “…we saw two women kissing and he said it was wrong….an abomination...you should have seen the look on his face.”

Lauren wonders if her father knows how much he fucked her up with that look, she wonders if he’d care at all.

Camila’s eyes are wide and sad.

“Oh, Lauren,” she says and hugs Lauren tightly. “He’s the one who’s wrong. I’m so sorry. That’s why you’ve been acting so off lately. I should’ve realized earlier. Don’t listen to him, please, please don’t listen to him.”

Lauren wraps her arms around Camila and takes a deep breath and her father is thousands of miles away and Camila is right here. And that’s all that matters.

“I care more about what you think to be honest,” she sniffles.

“I think you’re incredible and I think there’s gonna be tons of girls that thinks the same because you’re the prettiest person I know!” Camila says as she pulls back and looks at Lauren. Lauren thinks she’s probably the furthest from pretty at the moment with snot and tears streaming down her face but Camila looks absolutely sincere and Lauren wants to believe her.

She buries her face in Camila’s shirt.

“Thank you, thank you so much.”

Camila kisses the top of her head. “I love you. Forever and ever and ever and ever—“

Lauren laughs softly. “I love you too Camz.”

“Does your mom know?” she asks gently.

Lauren shrugs. “I’m not ready.”

“One day, you will be,” Camila assures her.

 

And one day she _is_. She’s 14 and nervous and jittery and waiting for her mother to come home from her evening shift. Her heart is in her throat because she decided that tonight is _the night_.

(And she’d spent the day with Camila who’d pumped her with confidence and promised that if her mother ever kicked her out, she’d be welcome to live with Camila and that kind of doesn’t sound so bad.)

Her mother comes home and she tells her, near tears, almost begging her mother not to hate her but her mother just smiles at her and ruffles her hair and says “and the sky is blue.”

It’s honestly the most anti-climatic moment of Lauren’s entire life, she’s sure.

 

++++

 

She’s 16 when she meets Lucy Vives.

It’s the first month of Junior year and she’s late for the first class of the morning as usual—History.

Mrs. Edwards looks unimpressed but doesn’t scold her, just gestures for her to take a seat. She never scolds her or sends her to the principal’s office for her tardiness and that’s probably because Lauren is actually one of the few in class that actively participate.

History is one of her favorite subjects. It teaches the nature of humans and what shaped the world into what it is today. Surely sometimes it can get a little dull and dry but for the most part, Lauren thinks History is important to learn from previous mistakes and hopefully avoid them.

Lately they’ve been covering the US foreign policies in the middle east which Lauren is rather passionate about.

So when Matty McGowan opens his ignorant mouth and says, “If you ask me, we should just leave them to drown in their own shit. I don’t get why we gotta play the heroes and go running to rescue them only to get rapid by bombs going off in our backyards.”

Lauren, naturally, can’t stay silent.

“Oh look,” she says dryly, “Someone didn’t read their homework and is eating up whatever tride the media is selling.”

“What, Jauregui?” Matty snarls and leans forward, his long shaggy hair falling over his narrowed eyes. He’s got that ‘dark’ thing going on with his tattoos and ripped jeans and dark eyes and Lauren thinks he’d perhaps be her type if he wasn’t such a misogynistic, ignorant and racist asshole. (Oh and if she was capable of feeling attracted to boys).

Lauren looks him square in the eye. “All that ‘shit’ the middle east is drowning in is directly because of the good ol’ USA’s fucked up foreign policies—sorry—“ she says when Mrs. Edwards makes a noise of dismay at the increasing swearing, “Let’s take Afghanistan as an example. It’s being torn to pieces in the fight between the Taliban and the US. But did you know that the US were the ones to arm the Taliban in the first place?”

Matty sits back and rolls his eyes hard. “Bullshit.”

“Matty,” Mrs. Edwards admonishes, “If you aren’t adding anything productive to the discussion then keep quiet.”

“She’s right,” A voice says behind her and Lauren turns in her chair and is surprised to see a girl she’s positive she’s never seen in this class before. Her brown hair is pulled up in a loose bun, bandana wrapped her head and an oversized flannel thrown over a graphic t-shirt. She looks careless and carefree. She looks gorgeous. Lauren almost misses what she says. “The middle east has been wrecked by western powers who fought over land and people and resources that didn’t rightfully belong to them. What better way to control a countries’ oil than to completely destabilize the country and setting up a radical, ruthless dictator that they have in their pockets? It’s what’s happening in Iraq, Libya and even Syria.”

Lauren sort of stares at her in awe, because this girl isn’t just pretty, she’s smart and well spoken too and it has Lauren feeling some sort of way.

“Right,” Lauren says slowly and tries not to be too obvious in her staring, “I personally think a lot of things wouldn’t have looked so bad if the US didn’t invade Iraq back in 2003.”

She’s still looking at the girl, her body turned sideways in her chair and the girl smiles at her. She has the prettiest fucking smile and Lauren instinctively smiles back.

“Definitely the biggest failure in the history of US foreign policy,” she says.

And Lauren thinks she’s fall in love right then and there.

Lucy is out-spoken, fierce, smart and as beautiful as a summer day.

The first few times she hangs out with Lucy is spent trying to figure out whether she’s into girls or not. She doesn’t tell Camila about her at first, not entirely sure the reason why.

They’re at the creek for their third ‘hang-out’ and Lauren is busy admiring the soft curves and expanses of naked skin that is Lucy’s body in a bikini when Camila calls her.

“Lauren Jauregui! Where are you in this world!?”

Lauren holds the phone a bit away, her ears ringing, “Jesus, Camz!” she snaps, “Are you trying to blow my eardrums out.”

Camila giggles apologetically, “Sorry, babe,” she says, “Where are you tho?? I’m at your place and I can’t find you.”

“Out,” she replies vaguely, hoping that’ll it be enough of a response.

“Where?” Camila presses because of course it’s not enough for Camila’s curious ass.

Lauren hesitates. “Um…with a friend.”

“Who?” Camila sounds surprised.

“You don’t know her.”

Camila makes something that sounds like a mixture of surprise and amusement, “I know all your friends,” she deadpans and Lauren supposes she does. Because they’ve always been _Camila &Lauren_, inseparable, joined at the hips, a package deal with the same, shared circle of friends.

Lauren glances at Lucy who’s occupying herself with throwing rocks into the stream and Lauren gets a little lost watching the way her boob jiggles with every throw. She quickly tears her eyes away when Camila makes a noise of impatience.

“Lauren?”

“Yeah, I’m here, sorry,” she mutters, “She’s new. She’s in some of my classes. I met her yesterday.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Oh,” Camila breathes and there’s something in her voice that Lauren can’t quite decipher through the distance, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lauren thinks she sounds disappointed, maybe even hurt. “I don’t know. I didn’t think it was a big deal? I can introduce you tomorrow.”

Another beat of silence. “Right,” Camila says slowly, “When are you coming home?”

“Soon, Camz. Save some of that ice-cream for me.”

“Only if you hurry!” Camila sings.

Lauren smiles and hangs up.

Turns out she didn’t hurry home fast enough, because Camila has managed to send her several texts by the time she gets home. Lucy pulls her into a goodbye hug in the car and Lauren sinks into the warmth of it, soaks in the feeling of Lucy’s body and the earthy smell of the creek lingering on her skin and she thinks she doesn’t want to let go.

She feels light on her feet like a summer breeze, cheeks tinged pink and eyes brighter than the sky. She soon discovers she is the only one in a good mood. Camila is curled up in Lauren’s bed, buried under a ton of blankets, wasting time on her laptop.

She looks up at Lauren with a sullen expression.

“I ate all the ice cream,” she says flatly, her eyes tracing Lauren’s form, “You went swimming?”

Lauren crawls into the bed next to her best friend, “There’s this creek in the woods,” she tells, “nobody comes there and it’s so chill. You’d like it.”

Camila sits up straight, combing her fingers through her messy, dark hair. “Lucy, huh?” she purses her mouth, “Tell me about this new girl you’re replacing me with.”

Lauren barks out a surprised laugh but Camila just pouts and “Oh,” Lauren blinks, “You’re serious.”

Camila huffs and crosses her arms. “Yeah, a little,” she admits. “You’ve been gone all day and I was _so_ bored, mija!”

Lauren curls in close to her and loops an arm around her. She flicks her nose and smiles when she protests.

“You’re so fucking dumb, sometimes, Camz,” she says and laughs, “No one can replace you. I promise.”

That seems to be enough to appease Camila at the moment and her sullen expression evaporates into a soft giggle.

“Good. I can put my plans of killing this new girl and getting away with it on hold.”

“It’s a mystery how something so tiny can be so terrifying,” Lauren muses.

Camila turns her head and affectionately pokes her nose against Lauren’s cheek. 

“So, this new girl…Lucy, tell me about her.”

Lauren takes a deep breath and she tells Camila about Lucy Vives who’s passionate and fierce and insanely smart. She tells her about her educated arguments in the history class and her quick mind solving problems in algebra. She tells Camila about her love for indie rock music and her sometime too lenient parents and her hometown in Pennsylvania.

But Lauren doesn’t tell Camila about Lucy’s raspy laugh or the way it makes Lauren’s tummy feel funny or the perfect curve of her tits and her hips and ass and her long, smooth legs or the way her eyes sparkles golden under the sun or the way Lauren gets lost in the shape of her mouth, the deep pinkness of it, of how she wants nothing more than to _kiss_ her until the world stops spinning and all the stars in the sky starts falling.

Yet, somehow, Camila figures her out, because she’s Camila and she’s got her figured out since they were five.

“Oh my God!” She screams, interrupting Lauren mid-speech. She points a finger at her, her expression positively _gleeful_ , “You _like_ her!”

Lauren’s face gives off the heat of a thousand suns and she splutters, “No, I don’t!”

“Yes, you do!”

“No, I don’t!”

“ _Yes!_ ”

“ _No_!”

Lauren is mortified at being exposed _and_ for her middle-school response, so she flees. Predictably, Camila gives chase. 

Camila chases her all around the house until she finally catches her by tricking Lauren into thinking she’s going left and goes right, tackling Lauren on the kitchen floor. Camila is merciless in her interrogation and she tickles Lauren until she’s screaming for mercy.

“Alright! Alright! _Alright_! I like her! You win!”

“Yes!” Camila is triumphant and makes a little victory dance around the island of the kitchen. It’s all the break Lauren manages to catch before Camila pounces on her again, exceptionally excited, because it’s the first time Lauren genuinely _likes_ someone and Lauren knows she isn’t going to hear the end of this.

 

Lauren kisses Lucy for the first time at a party.

At some point during the party, she loses sight of Lucy and finds her on the porch, staring at the nightsky, a soft smile on her lips.

Lauren thinks she looks absolutely breathtaking, like the kind of girl they write songs about.

She silently approaches her, leaning against the railing next to her and also turning her eyes skywards, curious as to what has Lucy’s attention.

The silence between them stretches on for a few moments.

“I believe there are multiple, alternative universes out there,” Lucy breaks the silence without removing her gaze from the sky. “The universe is infinite and expands to forever and beyond. I think there are millions of different worlds out there. Just like this one.”

Lauren draws closer to her, leans against the railing next to her and looks up. The stars are out tonight, shining brilliantly like a million little diamonds spread across a dark sea.

“Somewhere out there, there’s a planet where Donald Trump doesn’t exist,” Lucy continues, “On that same planet, I’m a famous actress who makes consciously woke movies, award-winning and critically-acclaimed. A philanthropist and humanitarian. I’d be best buddies with Lana Del Rey.”

Lauren looks at her and smiles. “Is that what you want? To become an actress?”

Lucy shakes her head. “Not particularly,” she says, “Now, in another universe, I’m a queen who rules the world and shows men that women are stronger and better at everything.”

Lauren watches her for a moment. “I like our universe version of you,” she says softly and Lucy looks at her, eyes a bit wide with surprise. “You as you’re now; kind, fierce, funny.”

Lucy stares at her, pretty ruby-red painted lips parted slightly. “Lauren,” she breathes.

Lauren swallows. “In another universe, I would be brave enough to kiss you.”

There’s a beat of silence. A moment where time seems suspended. A moment where Lauren doesn’t breathe, where her mind manages to run through the worst case scenario.

The moment passes. Slowly, one cold hand cups her face, the other delicately threads her hair and Lauren takes a helpless intake of air, eyes falling shut as she feels a pair of feather-soft lips pressing against her own.

Lauren is undone within seconds, because Lucy kisses like the world is going to fall apart at any minute, sweet and fierce, soft and hungry all at once and Lauren feels lost in her perfect lips and her curious tongue.

They hold each other close, Lucy fingers lost in Lauren’s inky hair, Lauren’s hands fitting around Lucy’s hips as if they were made to fit there. There’s nothing in this world that matters than their shared heartbeat, the blood rushing through their veins and their mouths melting together.

When they break apart, it’s brief and reluctant and only long enough to suck in air for their burning lungs before their mouths find their way back together again. 

Lauren doesn’t know how long they make out for, time is an illusion, but when they break apart and their worlds aren’t zeroed in on each other, they notice that they have an audience.

It’s Jimmy Parker from the football team. For a moment, Lauren’s heart sinks in her chest, flashes of her father’s reaction to women kissing hitting her, but then she discovers that it’s anything but disgust and contempt on Jimmy’s face. 

He’s staring at them. Face slack and eyes dark and wide.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, “That was _so_ hot.”

“Fuck of Jimmy,” Lucy says, voice low and breathless in a way that sends pleasant chills down Lauren’s body.

“Oh don’t be like that,” Jimmy says and approaches them. “You’re both _superhot_. Let me join in on the fun.”

“I said fuck _of_ Jimmy,” Lucy sneers annoyed.

Jimmy is the typical fuck-boy and obviously isn’t fucking off. He leers at them, coming closer than what Lauren finds comfortable and her whole body goes tight, fingers curling into fists.

“Come on,” Jimmy reaches out and grabs Lucy’s arm. “You look good together but you’re still missing something—a _real_ man who can give you _real_ pleasure with his dick—“

Jimmy Parker doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because the next second, he’s going down like a house of cards.

Lauren huffs, the fist that connected with Jimmy Parker’s idiotic face still raised. 

“Don’t fucking touch her,” She sneers down at the boy, rolling on the floor with his hand to his face, moaning in pain. “You’re not a ‘real’ man, you’re a little fuckboy with no fucking respect for women. There’s no woman you can please with your microscopic dick, you asswipe!”

“You psychotic bitch!” Jimmy snarls as he staggers unto his feet, unsteady after one too many cups of alcohol. He double flips them before he disappears back into the house.”

When Lauren turns her attention back on Lucy, she’s staring at her. Lauren swallows, a bit self-conscious.

“Sorry. Shit like that makes me so mad—”

“That was _so_ hot!” Lucy interrupts her and wraps her arm around Lauren’s neck, kissing her hard on the mouth. Lauren blinks, surprised but pleased and kisses her back.

“I’m so happy you’re also into girls,” Lauren says.

Lucy smiles.

“Right back at you,” she nuzzles her, “I couldn’t quite figure you out.”

Lauren’s heart flips happily at the thought that they had both been trying to figure each other out without the other knowing. She wishes this happened sooner, but better late than never as they say.

She can’t wait to tell Camila. Knowing her best friend, she’d find the way Lauren confessed her desire to kiss Lucy and knocked down that asshole all sorts of romantic.

 

They start to date and at first, their relationship is behind closed door, soft touches and lingering gazes but it doesn’t take long for them to show their love in school. They’re both brave and outspoken and doesn’t take anyone’s shit, so they shut down any negative comments easily—which thankfully there are few of.

(Most fuckboys hope that they can have a threesome with them while some girls think they’re faking it for attention).

It’s perfect at first, but the tension quickly follows.

The point of conflict?

Camila.

As Lauren spends more and more time with Lucy, she has less time for Camila, which understandably throws Camila for a loop since she hasn’t had to share Lauren before.

“I _never_ see you anymore,” she whines one day, on their way home from school, when Lauren has to decline hanging out later and binge-watch the new season of Jane the Virgin. “You’re always with Lucy.”

“That’s not true,” Lauren defends feebly, but she knows it’s true and she feels guilty.

So she invites Camila along to her date with Lucy and in hindsight that hadn’t been her greatest idea yet.

The thing is, Lauren has an inkling suspicion that Camila and Lucy don’t like each other, not that they _hate_ each other, but they don’t seem to care about each other either. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Camila has interrupted them _several_ times, getting hot and heavy or the fact that Camila feels like Lucy’s stealing her best friend or the fact that Camila is _very_ territorial when Lucy is around. Either way, it’s hard, because they’re the most important people in her life and she’d like them to get along.

Predictably, Lucy isn’t amused that she’s brought Lauren along and it quickly becomes apparent that she’d planned a _special_ nigt—she’s barely clothed when she opens the door, she’s cooked dinner and her parents aren’t home.

The dinner is awkward and stifled and ends in Lauren and Lucy’s first fight.

Lucy calls Camila ‘clingy’ while Camila is in the bedroom and Lauren automatically becomes defensive.

“She’s just lonely.”

“She is clingy,” Lucy insists, her brows knitted together in an irritated frown. “We can’t have _anything_ to ourselves without her weaseling her way into it. The creek, the open mic bar and you just _let_ her, you don’t even care. Tonight was supposed to be special and you bring her without telling me.”

Lauren shakes her head. “You’re overacting.”

Lauren realizes her mistake when she sees the stormy look on her girlfriend’s face.

“Oh, _I’m_ overreacting because I want something that’s just for _us_? I’m overreacting because I don’t want to feel like I’m sharing my girlfriend with her clingy best friend who uses every opportunity to rub it in my face just how _close_ you are!”

To make matters worse, Camila hears, “I didn’t mean for it to come off like that,” she says as she appears in the door way.

Lucy rolls her eyes hard, “What? You didn’t mean to come off as a territorial bitch?”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Lauren says sharply, warningly even before Camila can muster anything more than an offended gasp.

Lucy gives her a deeply betrayed look. “Of course you’re going to take _her_ side!”

Lauren honestly doesn’t understand how things spiraled out of control so fast, other than she’s a fucking idiot and she really doesn’t want to fight with Lucy. At this point, it appears to be inevitable.

“There are no ‘sides’ in this, Lucy! This whole thing is just being blown out of proportion right now. Let’s just talk about it calmly. Please.”

Lucy’s cheeks are flushed red, mouth drawn into a tight line. “I’m overacting and blowing things out of proportions? You don’t get how I feel do you? Of course you wouldn’t!”

“Lucy…” Lauren reaches for her hand, desperate to fix this quickly but Lucy shakes her off.

“No,” she shakes her head, moves out of her reach. “I can’t continue on like this. Not with her hovering all the fucking time.”

“I’m sorry,” Camila says, “But you’ve got it all wrong—”

“Stop, Camila,” Lauren snaps, sharper and harsher than she intends to. “Just, stop. Stay out of this, ok? I got this.”

Camila takes a step back, face deeply hurt. “I’ll see myself out.”

Lauren sighs exasperated, “Camila, wait.” But she’s already gone and not too many seconds later, there’s the sound of the door slamming shut.

Lauren let out a long suffering groan and rises to her feet to go after her.

“Don’t,” Lucy spits, “Don’t fucking go after her, Lauren.

Lauren pauses and blinks. “She’ll get lost, she’s got no direction sense whatsoever—”

“She can use Google Maps or call her mom to pick her up!”

Lauren opens her mouth to protest because Camila doesn’t know how to follow directions and her mother might not be home and she’ll get lost and hurt or _worse_ —

“Stop treating her like a helpless child,” Lucy exclaims, annoyed. “Stop being _so_ overprotective of her. Stop _enabling_ her!”

It’s in that moment that a scary thought manifests in Lauren’s mind; perhaps, Lucy and Camila can’t co-exist in her life.

She shoves it to the back of her mind but it rears its ugly head when she gets into a fight with Camila the next day.

Camila calls Lucy a ‘bitch’—which honestly is so unlike her—and Lauren gets angry.

“The world doesn’t fucking _revolve_ around you, Camila, Jesus Christ, stop ruining my relationship by being so goddamn clingy.”

Camila fixes her with the most hurt and betrayed look and doesn’t talk to her for days.

In those days, her relationship with Lucy rapidly deteriorate. Suddenly, all they’re doing is fighting and Lauren no longer sees her through rose-colored glasses; all she can see is flaws and short-comings.

They have sex for the first time after a huge fight which probably attest to how unhealthy their relationship gets.

It’s new for them both; Lucy’s first time with a girl, Lauren’s first time period. It’s scary and it gets awkward at times, but mostly, it’s so special. Their soft kisses grow deeper, hungrier, passionate with desire and lust, every touch on naked skin leaves a trail of fire, pulling out deep sighs and moans of pleasure.

And Lucy who’s usually fierce and loud and brave looks so small underneath Lauren, vulnerable and wide-eyed in a way that’s almost heartbreaking, in a way that makes Lauren want to protect her to the ends of time.

They explore each other’s bodies with their eyes, their touch, their mouths and Lucy arches so beautifully off the bed when Lauren gets to the wonderland between her legs. Lucy laces their fingers and grips hard, breathing Lauren’s name in sinful ways.

Once it’s over and they’re cuddled together, sticky and sweaty, Lucy’s head nestled on Lauren’s chest—and in that moment, Lauren thinks about Camila and she feels restless. And a foreboding feeling creep in, she knows this won’t last.

They break up on their one-month anniversary.

They’re at some fancy restaurant when Lauren gets pictures of Camila at a party, acting absolutely out of character, drunk and stupid—dancing on tables, hanging on boys—and she knows she’s acting out. She also knows that she has to go get her before she gets herself in trouble.

Predictably, Lucy doesn’t understand.

“If you leave, we’re done.”

And it hurts, it really does, that Lucy gives her this ultimatum, but Lauren has known she would have to choose for a while now.

Her choice is clear. She rises to her feet and the look on Lucy’s face is absolutely heartbreaking.

“I’m sorry.”

The words feel stupid and meaningless in her mouth, they aren’t going to wipe away the tears rapidly lining along Lucy’s eyelashes, but she doesn’t know what else to say.

“I’ll always choose Camila.”

Lucy takes a broken breath, the hurt being swept away by anger and she says something that echoes in Lauren’s head the whole way to the party.

“Oh my God, it’s like you’re in fucking _love_ with her or something.”

 

Lauren always choses Camila.

She chose to sit next to Camila whenever they could choose their own seats from kindergarten through middle schools, she chose to work with Camila on every school group work whenever possible, she chose Camila on her team during gym classes even though Camila had no athletic bone in her body.

She will _always_ choose Camila.

And that, doesn’t necessarily means she’s _in love_ with her.

It means, first and foremost, that she’s her best friend. The girl that understands her better than she understands herself, the girl that she will always protect, from anything and everything, but especially horny high school fuckboys.

She finds Camila amidst the party with a horny high school fuckboy who’s all over her and trying to convince her to go upstairs with him.

Lauren charges through the crowd with purpose and the closer she gets, the more she can see how utterly _smashed_ Camila is. Her dark hair is a mess, framing her face, cheeks flushed bright red, eyes glazed over, the strap of her dress has fallen down her delicate shoulder. She’s giggling at the guy who seems to be the only thing keeping her from keeling over.

“No, no, I swear, I can do it, just give me another chance,” Lauren hears her say— _slur_ — as she gets closer, “I can rap Busta Rhymes whole verse in Look At me Now. Just _watch_!”

She tries but fails horribly, her words heavy in her mouth, pouring ungracefully over her lips and she pouts, disappointed. 

“Come with me upstairs,” fuckboy says and pulls Camila closer, leering, “You can show me all the other things you can do with that mouth.”

Lauren grimaces. Disgusting. Her blood feels like fire in her veins and she grabs the back of fuckboy’s shirt, forcefully ripping him away from Camila. Camila stumbles but before she lands on the floor, Lauren catches her, steadying her against her.

“Hey!” Fuckboy exclaims once he’s gotten his bearings.

Lauren fixes him with a withering glare. “Get the fuck out of here before I decide to punch you in the throat for trying to take advantage of her like this.”

The boy flips her finger and with huff, disappears.

“Laur?” Camila slurs, grabbing Lauren’s arms to steady herself.

Lauren turns her attention on Camila, pushes her hair out of her face and studies her. “You’re a mess, Camz,” she says with a sigh, “What are you doing?”

Camila’s lips quirk up in an almost there smile, “Having funnnn,” she says, dragging the word, “Like the way you like, Lauren.”

Lauren frowns. “You don’t have to act like someone you’re not. Not for me. Not for anyone, Camz.”

Camila blows air out of her mouth and pokes Lauren’s cheek, “I want you to like me.”

Lauren wants to brush off this talk like drunken, incoherent, but she has a feeling Camila is genuinely feeling this way. There’s a pang of hurt in her heart and she squeezes Camila closer, pulling her dress strap back in place.

“Camila,” she says seriously, “Of course I like you. That’s why I’m here, to save you before you do something you really regret.”

Camila looks into her face, silent for a moment before she breaks into a giggle. “Yeah?”

Lauren smiles and pokes her nose. “Yeah, dummy. Let’s get you home.”

They hitch a ride home and Lauren decides to take her back to her place, because she knows Camila’s parents won’t be too pleased by Camila’s state—and luckily, Lauren’s mother is away at a night shift at the hospital.

Lauren barely gets her to her room before Camila runs into the bathroom and throws up the contents of her stomach. Lauren is there of course, holding her hair back, soothingly rubs her back as she sobs into the toilet—a thing she always does when she throws up—fetches her a glass of cold water and helps her out of her clothes into an extra pair of jammies. Then she puts her in bed and crawls under the covers with her.

“Why are you here?” Camila asks around a yawn, blinking heavily with her eyes. She’s sobered up a bit, but still a whole lot of drunk.

“What?” Lauren asks confused.

“Shouldn’t you be with _Lucy_ ,” she says the name in an exaggerated manner that almost has Lauren smiling, if it wasn’t’ for the fact that she’s reminded she’d broken up with her girlfriend.

She shrugs. “I don’t think I’m gonna see her anymore.”

Camila’s eyes go wide. “What?” Lauren’s eyes also goes wide when Camila’s eyes rapidly fills with tears. Shit.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

Well. Lauren supposes it kinda is in some way, in other ways, it had been inevitable so she reaches out and pinches Camila’s nose between her fingers, feels Camila’s warm tears slide over her knuckle.

“Don’t cry,” she says softly, “It wasn’t going to last.”

Camila sniffles and shuffles closer, “I missed you,” she whispers, “I’m sorry, I kept my distance because I didn’t want to be clingy. I didn’t want to ruin your relationship with her, but I did anyway. I’m so sorry, Lauren. I was just so sad because you liked her more than me.”

Lauren lets her word-vomit, even though her sentence slurs together and she almost doesn’t understand half of it. Still, she waits patiently for her to stop and take a shaky breath.

“Don’t be silly,” she says with a soft smile, “I don’t like anyone more than I like you.”

And in that moment, as she says that, she knows it’s the truth. She knows it’s the reason she gave up on her relationship with Lucy. She knows it’s the reason she isn’t nearly as upset about the breakup as she feels she should be. Surely, she’s sad and disappointed that it didn’t work out. Sure, she’s going to miss Lucy, but she isn’t torn up, upset in a ‘I’m gonna do nothing but cry, eat ice-cream, watch movies and wallow in self-pity’ kinda way. And trust her, she knows what that looks like, has seen it one too many times on Camila.

“Really?” Camila looks hopeful and innocent and _young_. “You don’t think she’s cooler than me?”

Lauren reaches out, brushes Camila’s pink cheek with a finger, “Are you kidding me? She’s not the one who rap Busta Rhymes _whole verse_ in Look At Me Now.”

Camila’s face brightens and breaks into a beautiful grin; all sunshine and rainbows, the way only Camila can grin and Lauren feels something tug inside of her.

“Thank you,” Camila says.

Lauren smiles but the smile falters when Camila leans in close and so casually, like it’s nothing, she kisses her.

Lauren doesn’t expect it, so she goes still with surprise, eyes spilling wide. The kiss is feather-soft and warm, a touch barely there, but enough to send small thrills all the way to her fingertips. Camila presses closer for a moment, lips slotting perfectly against Lauren’s and before Lauren can reciprocate it’s over.

Camila lets out a soft sigh and moves her head to rest over Lauren’s chest, giving Lauren a faceful of her hair. Lauren doesn’t move, barely breathes, the only sound in the room is her loud heartbeat and the sound of Camila’s breath evening out as she falls asleep.

Lauren groans. She knows she’s going to think about that little kiss for the rest of the night. She also knows that Camila won’t remember it when morning rolls around.

It’s not fucking fair, she thinks, but few things are.

 

++++

 

They’re seven-year-old when Camila first kisses her.

It all starts with Camila’s introduction into Telenovelas; overdramatic, over-the-top, ridiculous shows even for soap operas. But in the Cabello Household, they loved it and watching the newest telenovela was bonding time for them.

(Lauren, to this day, suspects those telenovelas are what made Camila into the hopeless romantic she is—though she’s more convinced that Camila simply was born a sentimental, idealistic dreamer.)

One night, Lauren is staying over at the Cabello Household for a sleepover and is invited to watch Telenovelas with Camila, her mother and her abuela. While the Cabellos giggle, laugh, ohhhs and aaahs at the dramatic happenings in the movie, Lauren remains unmoved. Mostly because her understandings of the Spanish language is limited, unlike Camila who’d immigrated to the country with her family only a couple of years ago.

When the movie is finally done and they’re up in Camila’s screechingly pink room, Camila sighs wistfully.

Lauren looks up from her drawing. “What?”

Camila is looking down at her Barbie doll that she has dressed in a white gown. “What do you think….it’s like to be kissed?”

She looks at Lauren as if Lauren is supposed to know. Lauren shrugs and returns to her drawing. “Dunno.”

“Elena says it feels like magic,” Camila says, eyes bright and shiny.

Elena is Camila’s 14 year old cousin who is usually babysitting Camila—and Lauren if she’s staying over—but she spends more time on her phone than actually keeping an eye on them. Once, Lauren and Camila snuck out, were gone for at least 20 minutes, and returned without Elena noticing.

“How does she know? Has she even kissed?”

Camila nods eagerly. “She said she kissed this boy from her school and they’re gonna become girlfriend and boyfriend.”

Lauren is honestly uninterested in boys and kisses and she’d rather finish this drawing she’s got going on, so she nods and hums. But of course, Camila isn’t done.

“I want to know what it feels like.” She takes her kendoll and wraps his arms around Barbie, tips her down and makes him kiss her. As mentioned before, too many telenovelas. “Don’t you?”

Lauren shrugs. “I don’t know?”

“I want kisses like the ones Alejandro gives Selena, _in the rain_ ,” Camila rises and throws herself dramatically on her bed. Alejandro and Selena are the two main-characters and love interests in the telenovela the Cabellos are currently obsessed with. “But no one wants to kiss me, I think.”

The sad tone in Lauren’s voice makes her look up. She also throws herself onto the bed, hard so Camila bounces and giggles. Lauren smiles and pulls at Camila’s pigtail.

“I’ll kiss you then.” It comes easy, natural.

Camila looks up at her, “Really?”

Lauren shrugs. “Yeah, if you want to know what it feels like.”

Camila blinks rapidly then sits up fast. 

“Ok,” she grins. “But we have to do it in the rain or else it’s not a real kiss.”

Lauren is confused. “What?”

Camila shrugs. “Alejandro said so. Wanna go downstairs for a snack?”

And just like that, they leave that topic.

It doesn’t come up again for another couple of weeks.

Then one day, they’re sitting around the dinner table after school, doing homework, while Lauren’s mother is in the kitchen, making them sandwiches.

Lauren is frowning down at her Math book as she tries to make sense of the numbers and is about to call her mother for help when Camila suddenly gasps.

“It’s raining!”

Lauren looks outside and sees the rain splatter softly against the window, quickly gaining in frequency. Lauren frown deepens. She’s disappointed as she’d hoped they could go outside and play after they’d finished their homework.

“Lauren, come on!” Camila says and rises to her feet.

“What?”

But she doesn’t get an answer, just an eager seven-year-old that grabs her by the arm and pulls her along. Lauren protests as Camila drags her outside, hears her mother calling their names from the kitchen.

Lauren squeaks softly when Camila brings her out into the heavy downpour that soaks her to the bone in seconds.

“Camila! What are you doing!”

Camila’s hair is plastered to her face, a huge smile on her lips, a gap in her teeth where her front tooth is missing.

(She lost it a week ago and after she’d stopped crying, she’d bough them candy for the money the ‘tooth fairy’ had left behind.)

“Kiss me,” she says.

Lauren, having forgotten the conversations a couple of weeks ago, just stares blankly at her.

“Kiss me!” Camila repeats.

Apparently Lauren is too slow to react because Camila loses her patience and steps close and kisses Lauren. She surges forward so hard and suddenly, their noses bump, and their lips touch clumsily and inexperienced.

Camila takes Lauren’s face in her small hands, imitating what she’s seen on the tv and Lauren presses back into the kiss and wraps her arms around Camila’s waist, also imitating what she’s seen on the tv, unsure if she’s doing it right, but eager to please Camila.

The touch is wrapped in warmth and innocence and lasts for a few seconds. 

Camila pulls back and looks at her curiously. “What do you think?”

Lauren shrugs, still gripping Camila’s waist. “Nice,” she says sincerely. It had felt nice and safe.

Camila gives her another gap-toothed grin, but before she can say anything, Lauren’s mother is in the door, calling out for them.

Lauren’s mother is not very happy with them and gives them a light scolding as she draws them a warm bath and finds them dry clothes to change into. 

(Later when they’re all snuggled in the living room with big cups of hot chocolate, Lauren’s mother asks them what on earth they’d be doing out in the rain. Camila eagerly explains how they wanted to feel what it was to kiss in the rain. Apparently, her mother finds this absolutely hilarious and it gives her a good laugh.)

 

++++

 

The thing is, after Lucy, Lauren becomes more conscious of things, she doesn’t know if things _change_ or if they just become more apparent.

It’s things like when Camila is in her room, changing out of her clothes and Lauren finds her gaze lingering as she wonders when Camila grew up. It’s these warm and fuzy feelings she gets in the pit of her soul when Camila sings her the new song she’s written in Spanish, it’s feeling Camila’s soft curves when they’re pressed together, cuddling in bed, it’s the way Lauren’s heart beats loudly with every smile and laugh Camila gives, it’s the lingering touches and the soft smiles.

And Lauren has always disliked Camila’s boyfriends, but lately, it’s accompanied with this uncomfortable feeling in every inch of her.

 

+++++

 

Lauren has always thought it was fascinating, admirable even, how much love Camila holds in her tiny body. Her love is a well as vast and deep as the ocean, never drying out, seemingly never-ending. She _overflows_ with it. She loves with abandon. She wears her heart on her sleeve and loves like she’s never been hurt before.

Lauren is scared that Camila will keep giving out pieces of herself to people who don’t deserve it to point where her seemingly bottomless pit of love dries out.

It’s those thoughts that grows along with the list of boys that disappoint Camila. Lauren is convinced that none of those little boys from school are capable of giving Camila the love she’s seeking, the kind of breathless, romantic, soulmate-kinda love that she writes about in her journals.

But Camila never gives up. A hopeless romantic and dreamer down to the core of her bones.

So, Lauren is hardly surprised when one day, Camila throws open the door to her room, cheeks flushed, a look in her eye that Lauren knows to well.

His name is Shawn Mendes this time. Camila bumped into him in the hallway and ended up falling flat on her ass, but Shawn helped her up— _it was _just_ like the movies, Lauren, it was _so_ romantic’_ —and Camila thought he was the cutest thing to walk on earth with his dimples and his teeth and eyebrows and _everything_.

As Lauren listens to Camila gush about this new boy, she finds herself dislike him before even meeting him.

And her dislike for him doesn’t go away when she finally meets him and he appears to be a perfectly nice and charming boy. He wears the same shirt in different colors every day and the same tight, black jeans and he carries his guitar with him wherever he goes. He’s tall, towering at least a head over Camila’s petite frame.

The thing is, Lauren can tell that Camila has fallen for him and _hard_ , if the constant googly eyes Camila gives him or the way their conversations somehow always manages to be about Shawn lately is any indication.

Camila and Shawn grow close and quickly. Camila has always loved singing but Shawn introduces her into playing guitar and song-writing, a fierce passion they share and only serves to bring them closer. 

It’s hard, sharing Camila again. It’s hard, watching Camila fall deeper and deeper. It’s hard, watching Camila perform a love-song with Shawn—that they wrote together—at the school’s talent show. It’s hard watching Camila’s huge, obvious heart-eyes towards Shawn as she sings her little heart out. And Lauren wishes she could appreciate it, because damn, Camila has always had a voice that made Lauren feel all warm inside.

After the song, when everybody is milling around and drinking cheap sodas, she catches Shawn chatting with some boy she vaguely recognizes from her religion class. It’s nothing Lauren is interested in, but when she’s about to turn away and find Camila, she catches Shawn watching the boy leave as they finish their conversation. Or more specifically, watching the boy’s bum as he walks away.

Suddenly, Lauren is very interested.

Lauren begins keeping an eye on him, watching him, maybe stalking him just a little bit, but she justifies that she’s only doing it to save Camila from another heartbreak—no selfish reasons involved at all.

It’s almost unnoticeable when you don’t know what you’re looking for, but Lauren knows exactly what she’s looking for. She catches Shawn looking at other boys when he thinks no one is watching and it isn’t some innocent looking, it’s definite ‘I’m-checking-you-out’ looks. And those looks even have hints of longing and pain in them, but that’s only when he’s watching Connor from the football team.

One day, she ~~stalks~~ follows Shawn and finds him sitting on the bleachers, watching the football team practicing, or more specifically, Connor practicing, naked, sweaty chest glistening in the sun. The way Shawn watches him, makes it crystal clear to Lauren that he doesn’t love Camila the way she loves him.

It’s obvious he’s in the closet and if Lauren isn’t thinking about Camila and how it’ll break her heart, she’d be sympathetic, because she knows exactly what it feels like to be afraid to be yourself.

Now that Lauren holds this knowledge, the hard part is figuring out a way to tell Camila that the boy she is madly in love with is madly gay and in love with someone else.

Two weeks go by of Lauren trying to find the right time and place before things can go further, not made easier by the fact that her time spent with Camila dwindles as Camila spends more and more time with Shawn.

One day, Camila drops by and tells her Shawn introduced her to his family.

“They were all so lovely and friendly with me, Lauren. They told me I was Shawn’s first girlfriend and that they were looking forward to me being a part of their family! Isn’t that amazing?”

Lauren stares at her bright-eyed best friends and decides she has to put a stop to the madness, because obviously there’s no right time and Camila’s gonna get hurt no matter what.

She takes a deep breath. “Camila, there’s something I need to tell you—“

“Me first,” Camila interrupts and throws herself down on the sofa next to Lauren. She pulls her knees under herself and turns her body towards Lauren. Something about the look on Camila’s face makes Lauren nervous. “Lauren…I’m ready.”

Lauren blinks blankly at her. ”For what?”

Camila bites down her bottom lip, color rushing to her cheeks. “To have sex.”

 _Fuck_.

Lauren’s heart all but drops right out of her chest. She doesn’t say anything for a moment before she forces words out of her dry throat, “W-what? Whoa, I..I thought you were waiting for the _one_?”

“He’s the one, Lauren,” Camila says with absolute conviction.

Lauren swallows hard, a barely noticeable tremor in her voice as she asks, “How do you know?”

“It just feels right, right here,” Camila says and places a palm over where her heart is, “When I’m with him, I feel alive, reckless, _invincible_ , like I can do _anything_. I’ve never felt like this with anyone before.”

And she hasn’t _looked_ this bright and rosy and _in love_ with anyone before. 

The thing is, Lauren’s words turn into ashes in her mouth and she never tells Camila, can’t get herself to it, clings to the small hope that perhaps she’s wrong, perhaps her own feelings has made her see what she wants to see, perhaps Shawn truly is the one for Camila.

So she forces herself to sit back and watch Camila prepare the perfect night, a night she’s been planning since the day she became interested in getting close and intimate with a boy.

Lauren already knows this perfect night by heart, because she’s sat through Camila talking about more times than she cares to count; it’s a romantic, home-cooked dinner, it’s scented candle-lights, it’s Camila in her favorite dress, it’s deep touches and passionate kisses, it’s new, soft sheets and more candles, it’s Camila wearing the only matching set of underwear she owns.

The day comes and Camila invites Shawn over, her family away at Disney and Lauren sits at home, feeling sick to the pit of her stomach.

It becomes a night of binge-watching Netflix and doing everything to distract herself.

She doesn’t expect to find Camila sitting in her kitchen the next morning, looking small and dejected.

Concern churns in her stomach.

“Camila?”

Camila looks up at her with big, sad eyes. “I don’t think he’s attracted to me. He wasn’t even interested. He didn’t even stay the night. Is there something wrong with me?”

“Oh, Camz,” Lauren breathes and pulls her friend into a tight hug. She makes Camila her favorite breakfast meal—banana pancakes with crispy bacon and syrup—and a big cup of her favorite tea. As they cuddle on the sofa, Lauren holds Camila close, fingers digging into her ribs, her nose buried in her hair and she almost tells her. 

But she doesn’t. She thinks, not right now. Later.

However, the thing is Lauren never gets the chance to tell her.

The thing is the annual high school dance is just around the corner and Camila _lives_ for these things. She’s blabbered on and on about how she wanted to experience it with a high school sweetheart. And before Shawn, she’s never had the chance, but now that she does, she’s been counting down the days.

Lauren hasn’t been able to burst her bubble when she’s so happy and excited, especially when there’s a chance she could be horribly mistaken.

Which brings her to this stupid dance—that she absolutely doesn’t die _for_ but feel dying because of—watching Camila and Shawn being all lovey-dovey on the dance floor. And it’s hard, because Camila looks so pretty in her white dress and her flowing dark hair, like an ethereal fairy princess and she’s got stars in her eyes as she looks at Shawn. And they look adorable together, it has Lauren almost believing that she’s truly wrong. _Almost_.

Because there are moments Lauren catches Shawn’s gaze wandering, searching and landing on Connor Franta who’s being obnoxious with his soccer pals and sneaking liquor into his punch when the teachers aren’t looking.

And if Lauren didn’t want to go home before, she definitely wants to go home when she sees Lucy.

(Of course they’ve seen each other since the breakup which is pretty unavoidable given the fact that they go to the same school and share a couple of classes. It’s been three months and every time they accidently get eye contact, it’s well…a bit awkward.)

Lucy looks beautiful in her red dress that compliments her warm skin tone and her braided updo. Lauren almost wants to walk up to her, because in all honesty, she misses her, and even though they properly are better off apart, perhaps they could still be friends. She’s about to muster up the courage to approach her ex-girlfriend but falters when some boy walks up to her and wraps his arms around her, kissing her squarely on the lips.

Lauren swallows around the lump in her throat and spins on her heels, her lungs suddenly desperate for some fresh air.

So she sits on the bleachers and stares up at the bright, full moon hanging in the black sky. She closes her eyes briefly and lets out a soft sigh. It’s hard, watching someone move on even though you haven’t been together for months. She still remembers what it’d been like to be with Lucy and she realizes, she misses feeling like that with someone. Except it isn’t that simple, when the someone you’d like to feel close to already is close with someone else.

She’s deep in her thoughts, so she doesn’t hear the couple of teenagers who’s snuck out into the dark again, stumbling under the bleachers not far from where she’s sitting. 

She first discovers that she isn’t alone when she hears heavy breathing. She sits up and looks around, perking her ears but there’s nothing but the sound of the soft breeze ruffling the tree leaves. 

She shrugs it off as her imagination and is about to fall back into her thoughts when she hears soft cursing. She sits up straighter and looks around at the dark, empty field. Nothing. But then seconds later, it’s there again, someone cursing under their breath.

“Oh, fuck,” she hears more clearly. Unmistakably a breathless man voice and then quickly followed by a deep unmistakably boyish moan.

She realizes it comes from under the bleachers and she rolls her eyes hard. Appears that a couple of horny kids couldn’t keep their hands to themselves and snuck away from under the supervisors’ watchful eyes. Of course they decide to get freaky right under where Lauren is thinking about her stupid life.

“Oh fuck, that’s good, keep going, fuck.”

Lauren grimaces and rises to her feet, not interested in hearing more. She stealthily ascends the few steps down to the ground and startles when she hears something knock against the metal.

“Ouch! Fuck!” this time not a curse of pleasure but one of pain. Seems like someone hit their head and Lauren snorts softly.

There’s a soft laugh. “Are you ok?”

Lauren stops up, her blood freezing in her veins. That voice.

“Yeah, yeah, just hit my head, I’m good though, keep going.”

“Are you sure? That sounded pretty bad.”

A pause. Then more moans. Lauren stands frozen. Surely she imagined she heard who she thought she heard. Surely this was her imagining what she _wanted_ to hear. She should walk away and pretend she never heard anything in the first place. 

Walk away, Lauren, walk away. Lauren takes a few steps back towards the gymnasium where the party is still happening but then she takes a sharp intake and even a sharper turn on her heels, heading back towards the bleachers. She ducks into the darkness and moves slowly towards the moans, trying not to alert her presence by stepping on the junk spread on the ground.

She gets close enough to make out the two figures. One is standing against the scaffolding, the other is kneeled in front and there is no doubt as to what actions they are engaged in.

As her eyes becomes used to the darkness under the bleachers, she makes out the sandy blond waves and broad shoulders that can only belong to one Connor Franta, and the boy on his knees in front of him, enthusiastically sucking Connor’s dick is none other than Shawn.

Lauren stumbles back blindly, shocked by this discovery and accidently kicks a soda can. The noise it produces alerts the boys and their gaze snaps towards her.

There’s a moment, a split second where the three of them stare at each other and in that moment, the whole world stands still.

“Fuck,” Connor hisses and stumbles away from Shawn, nearly falling over himself in the rush he’s in to pack his meat back into his pants. He looks positively horrified as he charges right at Lauren.

“Don’t you _dare_ tell anyone,” he snarls at her and Lauren can’t even reply, because he’s gone the next second.

Which leaves Lauren and Shawn.

“Lauren?” there’s a slight tremor in Shawn’s voice as he stares at her, eyes wide, skin shining pale in the blackness. He slowly rises to his feet.

Lauren gives him a sharp look, shakes her head and turns to leave.

“Lauren!”

Lauren ignores him and continues on her way out.

“Please, wait.”

Lauren doesn’t know why she stops up, maybe it’s the desperation in Shawn’s voice.

She spins around to face him as he comes out from under the bleachers, panting softly. She crosses her arms and glares at him.

“What?” She snaps coldly.

Shawn swallows, “Please don’t tell her.”

Lauren scoffs in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? You don’t want me to tell her that I just caught you on your knees sucking Connor Franta’s dick?”

Shawn winces visibly and looks away from her heated glare. 

“It’s complicated,” he mutters weakly.

“It’s simple, actually. You’re cheating piece of shit.”

Shawn hangs his head in shame and he looks small and vulnerable, not that Lauren is going to have any sympathy for him.

“How can you do this to her? For how long, Shawn?”

Shawn looks up at her briefly. “It…it only happened a few times. I didn’t do it to hurt her, I just—“

“You know goddamn well that this will fucking _destroy_ her,” Lauren nearly yells and she closes her eyes and takes several deep breaths to calm the brewing anger down. “You know how much she adores you. Do you even love her?”

“Of course, I do!” Shawn explains, pained, “I care about her. Just…not the way she deserves. She’s the sweetest girl and I’ve done everything to give her what she deserves…but I just can’t. no matter how much I want to.”

He’s sincere. Lauren can tell, but she still wants to beat the shit out of him.

“Look, you don’t understand,” Shawn says. “If my father found out about me, that I…that I like boys, he would _kill_ me…then disown me. And I can’t, I can’t lose my family.”

There are actual tears in Shawn’s eyes and real pain and fear carved into his face. The hard lines in Lauren’s face softens and her crossed arms fall to her sides. She sighs softly and looks away.

“I’m sorry about your homophobic dad,” she says, “My father is a pierce of shit too and I haven’t heard from him in years, so I know how you feel.”

They look at each other for a moment, in mutual understand, for only those who’ve experienced the same pain can truly understand each other. Lauren takes a deep breath.

“Still, what you’ve done to Camila is unforgiveable, leading her on like that…”

Shawn looks defeated and guilty. “I know. I feel like shit. I would’ve told her earlier but I couldn’t.”

“You have to tell her or I will.”

“Tell me what?”

It’s safe to say that both Shawn and Lauren startle so badly that their hearts nearly drop out of their chests. They turn simultaneously towards the source of the voice and startle once more upon seeing none other than Camila standing there.

They stare at her, speechless and she looks back at them, clueless.

“Camila,” Lauren says, mouth dry. “What are you doing out here?” 

“Um, looking for you two,” she says in a ‘duh’ voice and looks at them. “So, what is it you have to tell me?”

She looks so confused and so sweet, standing there, looking like a fairy princess under the moonlight and all Lauren can think about is how she failed at protecting her, how she soon will have to pick up the jagged, broken pieces of her best friend and her heart is already breaking for Camila.

She turns and looks expectantly at Shawn.

 

Camila’s angry with her. She doesn’t return her calls that whole night and the next day too. When she goes home to her, she finds her parents in the kitchen with twin worried expressions.

“She really needs you, Lauren,” her mother tells her, “She needs a friend.”

Camila apparently doesn’t think the same. She screams at her, feeling betrayed that Lauren didn’t tell her sooner, that she made her look like a fool and Lauren lets her scream at her, waits for her to calm down before she approaches. She sits down on the edge of the bed and gathers what pieces there’s left of her best friend in her arms.

Camila looks absolutely heartbroken, she’s cried so much that her eyes are swollen and red. She feels so small and seconds from shattering into pieces as she sobs into the crook of Lauren’s neck and Lauren’s holds her tight, feeling her own heart breaking in turn.

“Is there something wrong with me?” Camila sobs, “I don’t understand. I was so sure he was the one. I was going to give him _everything_. I _gave_ him everything and he never loved me, Lauren. He never loved me.”

Lauren runs her fingers soothingly through her hair, feeling her small body tremble in her arms. “It’s not you, Camz. It’s not you. He just…wasn’t capable of giving you what you deserve.”

“No, it must be me,” Camila blubbers, “You’re right, I’m naïve and foolish, I’m never going to find my one true love because love is a lie and it doesn’t exist.”

Lauren’s heart twists. This is what Lauren has been scared of, that Camila will lose that romantic, idealistic heart of hers that makes her who she is. Lauren doesn’t want her to be hurt and jagged and unable to trust anyone because she’s been hurt one too many times.

“No,” she says firmly and pulls back to look at Camila’s red, teary face. “You’re wrong. Love is real. The kind of love you’re looking for is out there. You just have to keep looking for it, Camz. I promise you, you’ll find. Don’t give up.”

Camila doesn’t look like she believes her one bit. “I loved him so much, I _love_ him, Lauren and he doesn’t love me,” she wails and digs her face back into the crook of Lauren’s neck.

Camila’s heartache keeps her bedridden for _days_ , she misses two days of school and if the holidays didn’t roll around, she’d properly miss more. Lauren diligently gathers her notes from her classmates for the classes she misses.

At first, Lauren lets her wallow in her self-pity, buys her all the strawberry and banana ice-cream she can eat, runs her fingers through her dirty, unkempt hair, watches her go through two boxes of Kleenex as she weeps while her playlist of sad songs fills her dark room.

One day Lauren walks in on her, sitting on her bed, swaddled in blankets with her laptop, re-watching the notebook while she weeps.

“I’m never going to find the Noah to my Allie,” she sobs and she looks absolutely miserable because she hasn’t showered in nearly a week.

Lauren decides enough is enough.

She goes into the bathroom and prepares a bath for Camila, just the way she likes it, with bubbles and lavender oil. Then she bodily drags Camila out of her room, Camila fights her and screams so loud that her parents and sister comes running, thinking someone is getting murdered.

They all gang up on her—which makes her scream of bloody betrayal in her own home—and locks her in the bathroom with no promise to be let out unless she cleans herself. Sometimes, tough love is the way to go.

While Camila is in the bathroom, Lauren draws the curtains to her room to let some sunlight in, cleans the floor of empty candy wrappers and changes her sheets into fresh ones. She even puts on some upbeat-fun music.

Camila returns to the room clad in her pink onesie, hair wrapped up in a towel and looks approximately like a five-year-old, pouting child. Still, she looks remarkably better than twenty minutes ago.

Her resistance is half-hearted when Lauren forces her down in a chair. She blow-dries her hair and runs a comb through it, then she finds Camila’s favorite lipstick—a soft pink—and applies it to her lips. Her lips are beautiful, soft and enticing, Lauren’s gaze lingers on them a little too long, her hear tugging with sudden want.

“Lauren?”

She quickly snaps out of it and straightens up. She clears her throat, “I found your favorite outfit, go change into it,” she says and gestures to where she’s laid out the clothes on the freshly made bed.

Camila glances warily at it. “Do I have to?” She sounds defeated however and when Lauren gives her a pointed look, she sighs dramatically and rises to her feet.

Lauren tries to busy herself by touching up on her own lipstick and eyeliner, but her eyes betray her and wander. Camila has her back to her and is stepping out of her onesie, revealing smooth skin as she lets it pool by her feet. She wearing nothing but a pair of black underwear and Lauren can’t help but stare, because while Camila is tiny, her ass is big and perky. And because Camila wears exclusively skirts and dresses, it’s never so noticeable.

Once Camila is dressed and adorable in her red tennis skirt and polka dotted shirt, Lauren drags her out to their favorite pizza place where they eat their weight in pizza, then she brings her to the cinema to watch The Junglebook—which they’d both been looking forward to watch ever since they saw the trailer.

And Lauren thinks it feels a little bit like a date in between sharing popcorn and feeding Camila her frozen yoghurt because she didn’t like the new flavor she tried out. And somewhere along the way, she catches Camila’s first smile after her heartbreak.

Lauren looks at her, her heat full and vows never to let anything or any stupid boy ever hurt Camila again.

 

++++++

 

They’re 11 year olds and are sitting under a tree, eating the sour apples they have gathered.

“Camz?” Lauren asks her, staring out on the playground where a gangle of kids are playing while their parents chit-chat on the benches. 

Camila looks up, her cheek full of apple. “Hmmm?”

Lauren looks at her friend and asks a little shyly, “What do you think love is?”

Camila gives her a crooked-teeth smile, apple juice dripping down the corner of mouth.

“I think…I think love is _magic_ ,” she says bright-eyed and sits up on her knees in excitement of her favorite topic, “It feels like living in your own little fairy tale where you’d do anything for the one you love. You want to be together forever and ever.”

Lauren swallows and her gaze drifts back to the playground, to a pair of parents swinging their little boy between them, laughing happily. She feels a pang in her chest.

“I don’t think my parents loved each other,” she says quietly.

It’s still fresh, the pain of their divorce a few months ago. The month leading up to it had perhaps been even more painful, the fights, the shouting, the tears, the broken things.

Camila’s eyes soften and she puts a small hand on Lauren’s arm. “Lauren…”

“If they loved each other, they wouldn’t have left each other,” she says and hot tears prickles her eyes. “They wouldn’t make each other cry, they would still be together. How can they go from telling each other ‘I love you’ to screaming hurtful things at each other? Did they ever love each other? Was any of it real?”

She lets Camila pull her close in a warm embrace. 

She says, unsure, “I think…I think sometimes you have to be away from each other to be happy again…maybe being away from each other so they wont hurt each other is another kind of love.”

Camila has always been wise beyond her years, sensitive to others and her surroundings.

Lauren sniffles. “That’s not the kinda of love I want.”

She feels Camila’s smile against her hair, “Me neither,” she says, “And I’m sure we’ll find the kind of epic love we see in the movies.”

Lauren looks at her. “Do you believe that?”

Camila gives her, her biggest, brightest smile.

“I do.”

 

++++

 

Lauren and Camila spend the summer before college in San Francisco with Lauren’s crazy aunt who luckily has the heart of a sixteen-year-old so Lauren and Camila pretty much get free reigns to do whatever they want to do.

The first thing Camila did when they found out they could go to San Francisco was make a list of all the things she wanted to experience while there. So that’s what they use the first week or so on; exploring the city, or more specifically, exploring all the great restaurants.

Lauren falls in love with the city immediately, loves it for its sprawling diversity and its vibrant energy that’s so unlike what she knows from their town.

One day, they’re sitting outside in a café, enjoying the gorgeous weather and their delicious smoothies.

Lauren’s eyes follow a girl as she passes by in her tiny dress and mile-long legs.

Camila catches her looking and smirks mischievously, “She’s pretty.”

Lauren’s gaze snaps back to Camila and she thinks the girl hadn’t looked half as pretty as Camila sitting there in her summer dress. “She had some real smooth legs. I should ask her what she uses,” she jokes.

Camila bites the bottom of her lip and she looks at her with a look Lauren knows too well.

“Oh God,” she sighs, “What are you thinking?”

Camila grins, “We should find you a summer flirt!” 

Lauren raises a brow, “What about you? You’re the one who always talk about _’the fleeting, passionate rays of summer love’_ ,” she exaggerates a dreamy, dramatic tone to tease Camila.

Camila rolls her eyes, “Nah…I’m done with boys,” she mutters and Lauren knows she still hasn’t recovered from Shawn even though many months have passed. “I’m a strong independent woman and I don’t need no man! This summer is going to be about _me_ , loving and appreciating myself! And of course, focusing on your love life instead.”

“Oh Camz, stop.”

“Come on, you haven’t been with anyone since Lucy and that was like _ages_ ago!” 

Camila suddenly gasps, her eyes growing wide and round.

“What?”

“Let’s…let’s go to a gay bar!” Camila exclaims, bright with excitement.

“No,” Lauren says flatly.

Camila visibly deflates. “Why not? She pouts.

Lauren shrugs. “I don’t know…I don’t think I’m ready?”

“I’ll be there,” Camila says and reaches across the table to put her hand above Lauren’s. “I’ve wanted to go to a gay bar since forever.”

“Camila…you haven’t even been to a regular bar…besides do I have to mention the obvious fact that we’re underage?”

“We’re both 18. I’m sure we’ll find some place that’ll let us in and if not, I’m even more sure that Gloria will help us.”

Lauren knows that it’s pretty impossible to change Camila’s mind once it’s set on something, still she tries, “Agh…I don’t know…”

“Please? Pleeeease?” Camila clasps her fingers under her chin, pouts her lip and spills her eyes wide open, giving her, her perfect and practiced puppy look; it’s her favorite weapon and she’s gotten her way by using it one too many times.

“Don’t give me that look!” Lauren says but she’s already giving in because she’s a fucking fool.

“ _Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?_ ”

That’s how Lauren gets robbed into going to a lesbian bar with Camila and her aunt.

And she really wants to hate it, but how can she hate it when she’s surrounded by beautiful women who likes women and no sight of stupid fuckboys? Answer; she can’t.

Gloria, living up to her irresponsibility, buys them drinks.

And that night quickly spins a little bit out of control.

They drink. They get bold. They talk to some new people, all gorgeous women in their own way and Lauren is pretty sure that the one with the shaved sides who’s 21 and a tattoo artist is flirting with her, but she’s only got her eyes on Camila. Because Camila is already a natural flirt and when she’s got a little liquor in her blood, she’s even worse. Once Lauren realizes that there are quite a few women seizing Camila up like she’s an appetizing meal, she more or less stays glued to her side, so really, she shouldn’t be surprised when a couple of girls coos at them,

“Awww, you two are absolutely _adorable_ together.”

Lauren blinks confused at them, both confused at their words but also the fact that they look exactly like each other. At first, she thinks she’s seeing double but then Camila gasps,

“You’re twins!” She exclaims, “You’re soooo, sooo pretty. I love your hair!”

(See what Lauren means with the flirting?)

“Aw, thank you sweety,” One of them says, “So, how long have you been together?”

“What?” Lauren blinks.

“Oh,” Camila says and giggles uncontrollably. She’s such a light weight, honestly. “Lauren and I? We aren’t together. We are just friends.”

The twins actually look disappointed. “With the way you’re glued together, one might think otherwise.”

“Really?” Camila grins at Lauren, “We’ve always been like this.”

The girls introduce themselves as Alice and Freya and after chit-chatting with them at the bar, they invite them to come over to a little get-to-together at a friend’s place.

“I have a friend who’d just adore you,” Alice—or Freya, Lauren honestly can’t tell—loops her arm around Camila’s shoulder and Lauren doesn’t like the sound of that.

“Oh, we are here with our aunt and we can’t just leave her.”

Apparently they can, Gloria urges them to go and be young and have fun. She doesn’t seem the least worried that they’re leaving with a couple of strangers. Lauren is suddenly not so surprised why her mother had been so reluctant to let them stay with her little sister.

So they’re tipsy and giggly—or Camila is giggly, like _super_ giggly—as they pour out of Alice’s—or Freya’s—car and into a hipster apartment where a group of about six other people are gathered.

They all are pretty colorful, open-minded and fun people and Lauren thinks that _this_ definitely her crowd.

But, there’s this girl with shaved head and baggy jeans who’s all up in Camila’s business, flirting shamelessly with her. Camila, of course, basks in the attention and flirts right back; intentionally or not, Lauren really can’t tell.

Lauren nearly has a heart-attack when she walks in on them in the kitchen, _kissing_. Her jaw hits the floor and her eyes threatens to fall out of her skull with how much they bulge out. The girl—Sawyer?—has Camila corned against the window, her fingers in her hair and Camila doesn’t look like she’s complaining.

“What the fuck,” Lauren exclaims once her voice returns to her.

They part and look at her. Camila laughs, cheeks flushed and says, “oh, hi, Lauren,” like it’s no big deal.

“We’re leaving,” Lauren says abruptly.

Both of them begins to protests, but she repeats herself, firmly.

“We’re leaving.”

Camila pouts, “Aw ok.” She turns back to Sawyer, “Bye, I guess?”

Sawyer sighs, “Bye, butterfly princess.” She gives her a last snog and Lauren has to look away.

“I’ll just grab my things,” Camila says and flits past her.

Lauren doesn’t move. She glares at Sawyer, practically vibrating with possessiveness and jealousy.

“I’m getting some serious killer vibes from you,” Sawyer says and looks amused. “What is it? I’m pretty sure I was told you weren’t together.”

Lauren’s jaw clenches, “We aren’t,” she spits out bitterly.

Sawyer snorts. “Oh, well, perhaps you should get your shit together because that girl is positively delicious and someone is gonna snatch her up sooner rather than later.”

It was those words that rang in Lauren’s head on their way home, oh, and also the mental image of Camila kissing a girl.

“You kissed a girl.”

“Huh?” Camila is half-asleep on her shoulder.

“You kissed a girl,” Lauren repeats.

“Yeah,” Camila says and yawns, “So?”

Lauren swallows. “I don’t understand…do you…do you like girls?”

Camila doesn’t answer immediately and Lauren’s heart works itself into a state, hammering against her ribcage.

“I don’t know,” Camila mutters sleepily, “It was nice. The kiss was nice and it didn’t matter to me…that it was from a girl.”

“Ok…makes sense.”

In that moment, Lauren feels something deep inside of her soul that feels a little like _hope_.

 

++++

 

In retrospect, Lauren thinks she’s always been in love with Camila without realizing it. She’s been willing to fight for Camila and hand her the whole world if she asked her to since she was only six years olds, but back then, she thought it was just how best friends felt about each other. The intense dislike for the boys in Camila’s life and the reluctance to give them a chance even before she met them, now makes more sense than just Lauren being overprotective.

Once Lucy made her realize, she’s been pushing it to the farthest corner of her mind, because she never thought she had a chance. 

But now, after the summer in San Francisco, after witnessing the possibility of Camila being into girls, even a little bit, Lauren’s heart can’t help but hope.

And this hope makes her bold.

They live together now in their own little flat—rent covered by their parents—close to their dream university that they both got accepted into.

(Lauren remembers that she got her acceptance letter before Camila. That Camila had been put on the waitlist and how ready Lauren had been to wait another year for Camila, despite Camila’s protests. But it all worked out in the end.)

It’s been four months of living together and Lauren falling deeper and deeper if that is even possible. It’s grocery shopping together, it’s bickering about whether or not they should use their limited money on more banana icecream, it’s bickering about who’s turn it is to do the dishes, it’s _always_ sharing beds even though there’s two bedrooms, it’s spontaneous getting drunk together, it’s blowing all their money on Chinese take-outs and consequently living on ramen noodles for weeks on end.

It’s waking up to Camila every morning with her sleepy eyes and messy hair, it’s Camila stealing her clothes and Lauren complaining even though she loves seeing Camila in her oversized sweaters, it’s Camila getting inspired for a new song and playing the guitar on ungodly hours, it’s being stressed and annoyed at all the workload in school then coming home and Camila instantly knowing how to make her relax.

It’s Lauren being bold, letting her touches linger, making it a thing that they kiss on the cheek when they say hello and goodbye, it’s making Camila her favorite breakfast when they have the money for it, it’s waiting for an opportunity to confess.

And the thing is, Camila hasn’t been with a boy since Francisco even though she’s got nearly every college boy lined up outside her door.

Lauren is _soclose_ , just gathering the last bit of courage but then _Dylan_ happens.

Lauren meets him first at an out of control frat party that she regrets coming to the second she steps into the chaos. She’s only here because her English Lit study group dragged her along and she didn’t have anything better to do since Camila was hanging with a few friends from her music program.

She’s minding her own business, nursing a cup of piss poor beer as she watches the mayhem go down, not nearly drunk enough to find any amusement in it.

There’s a girl that catches her attention. Gorgeous, long curly black hair, a smile that breaks hearts, showing a lot of delightful dark skin in her tiny shorts and tight top. She catches Lauren staring and Lauren smiles at her, studying her and the girl smiles back coyly and all Lauren can think about is it’s been _ages_ since she’s been laid.

She’s ~~eyefucking~~ watching the girl when some boy slides up next to her.

Apparently his name is Dylan, he’s tall, dark, tattooed, might as well have ‘player’ tattooed smack across his forehead, have the allure that most girls like and apparently he thinks Lauren looks lonely and he wants to get her something better to drink.

Lauren is ruthless and cold in her rejection as she always is with boys who think themselves God’s gift to women. He doesn’t take no for an answer, has probably never heard of the word with his dangerous smile and dark eyes. Lauren’s patience is quickly running out when she’s saved by the unexpectable.

“I don’t think you’ve got anything that can satisfy her, honey,” the girl, the one Lauren had been watching before she was so rudely interrupted, says as she appears next to Lauren.

Once Dylan realizes what she’s implying, he looks genuinely offended but he finally leaves.

That’s how she meets Normani Kordei.

Second year of college. Part of a dancing studio; loves dancing in her free time. And most importantly; definitely into girls as well.

Lauren wants to go for it, but she doesn’t, because her heart is at home with a girl she’s known for over a decade.

 

++++

 

One day, five days post-party, Lauren is on her way to meet Camila at the fountain so they can go grocery shopping together.

She doesn’t expect Camila to be standing there with none other than Dylan.

Even from the distance, she can see that Camila is flirting and blushing and her heart sinks.

Camila looks up, “Oh, hi Lauren!”

Lauren nods and stares at Dylan with a ‘wtf’ look, but the son of a bitch just smiles innocently at her.

“Dylan, this is Lauren, Lauren, Dylan,” Camila says a bit shyly, cheeks rosy.

“Hey,” Dylan says coolly and gives her a nod, “Nice to meet you.”

Lauren wonders if he’s deliberately pretending that he wasn’t hitting her up a few days ago or if he genuinely can’t remember because he was drunk and high.

Before she can even attempt to ask, Camila lunges into the story of how they met in the café where Camila clumsily bumped into Dylan, spilling all of her hot chocolate all over Dylan’s shirt, which explains the brown smudge on his white t-shirt that Lauren first now notices.

She can’t quite get over how horrifyingly cliché it is, mostly because Camila lives for clichés and the way she’s looking at Dylan has her wanting to throw up the tuna sandwich she ate a moment ago.

“I’ll see you around,” Dylan tells Camila, letting his hand brush her arm and Camila all but fucking _keens_ into the touch.

“No,” Lauren says as soon as he’s gone.

“What?” Camila says, still staring after him.

“Forget it,” Lauren says and loops her arm under Camila’s, forcefully tugging her along. “You can’t like _him_.”

Camila finally tears her gaze from Dylan and blinks at Lauren, “What, why?”

“Because I know his kind! The most _fuckboyest_ of the fuckboys.”

Camila frowns at her, “That’s horribly judgmental of you, Lauren. You don’t even know the guy.”

“Except I do,” Lauren sneers in distaste, “He was all up in my business at the frat party a few days ago, thinking that I was ready to jump into bed with him just because he’s decent looking.”

She looks at Camila and Camila looks surprised but not appalled the way Lauren had hoped for.

“So,” Camila shrugs, “That’s what people do at frat parties. Look for a hook-up. That’s hardly a crime. It doesn’t mean he’s the incarnation of evil.”

Lauren groans frustrated and she wishes Camila wasn’t so goddamn _naïve_. “

“But he _is_ ,” she insists, “He just wants to get in your pants, Camz!”

“Hey, you don’t know that!” Camila pouts, “He’s actually…really sweet and charming.”

“Yes,” Lauren sneers, “Because he wants to fuck you.” She stops up and grabs Camila’s shoulder, looking pleadingly into her eyes, “Please, anyone but him Camz. Please don’t see him again.”

Camila looks back at her for a moment, “Jesus, Lauren, you’re not my mother and I’m not a child. I’ll decide for myself what I think about him. I appreciate your concern but I’m a big girl now.”

And the thing is, Camila is as stubborn as she’s naïve, so Lauren knows she’s lost this battle. The only thing she can do is hope that Dylan shows his true colors before it’s too late.

 

++++

 

Their trip to San Francisco is memorable in many ways.

One of them is how Lauren and Camila did something totally crazy that they’ve wanted to do forever—they got matching tattoos.

They’re walking through the China Town district in hunt of a good place to eat when Lauren spots a guy with gorgeous tattoos adorning the length of his arms and she has to physically stop up to admire them.

Camila sees her looking and spontaneously says, “Hey, you know how we’ve always wanted to get tattoo together? Let’s do it today!”

Lauren looks at her like she’s crazy, “Your mother will kill you. She freaked out when I drew on you with a sharpie and she thought you’d gotten a tattoo.”

Camila sticks her tongue out in a titillating way that has Lauren wanting to curls her own around Camila’s.

“So what?” she says with a mischievous glint in her eyes, “I’m 18. I can do whatever I want to! And I want to do something we’ll never forget!”

Lauren stares at her, heartbeat picking up, “Yeah?” she says breathless.

Camila slips her fingers through the gaps of Lauren’s and grins, fox-like and dangerous, “ _Fuck yeah_.”

(And Camila doesn’t curse often, but when she does, she reminds Lauren how utterly gay she is).

That’s how they find themselves at the first decent-looking tattoo shop, jittery with nerves and excitement, still holding hands.

The tattoo artist is a woman in her forties with untamable, fiery red hair and a well of tattoos of her own; she tells them to call her Red.

“What can I get for pretty girls?” She says in a strong, Russian accent.

They show her, because they’d designed them a long time ago and Lauren has picture of it in her phone. It’s simple and cute; the outline of mickey mouse’s head on the inside of their wrist.

It is one of their earliest memories, growing up, bonding over Disney movies, believing in the magic of it all and the happy ever after.

Camila insists on going first and she grabs Lauren’s hand and Lauren holds it tight.

“Very cute couple tattoo,” their tattooist comments as she readies her tools.

Lauren blinks, surprised. Camila giggles.

“You think so?” she asks Red and gives Lauren a playful look.

“Yes, makes me very happy that young girls can be themselves now without fear. It was very different when I was your age, had to sneak around with my girlfriend.”

It’s clear that Camila feels guilty for playing along now and naturally, now they have to keep playing along.

“When did you two meet?” Red sinks the needle into Camila’s delicate skin and the only indication of pain is a slight grimace across Camila’s face—she takes the pain surprisingly well, Lauren had been ready for her bawling her eyes out.

“Um, when we were kids,” Lauren replies.

Red smiles. “Childhood sweethearts? That’s very romantic.”

Camila smiles as she looks at Lauren. “Yeah, we grew up together. We’ve been attached at the hips for over a decade now—13 years?”

Lauren nods. It’s been a long time and she’s looking forward to many more.

“How long have you been together?” Red inquires.

Lauren doesn’t reply, just stares at Camila and apparently, Camila’s got this covered.

“A few years now,” she says, “We got together when we were 15. Our friendship naturally blossomed into more. It was one night, we were at a high point, looking over the million little lights of our town underneath us—it looked like fireflies—and then…then we looked into each other’s eyes and we just _knew_.”

For a moment, they look at each other, one intense moment before Lauren looks away, discreetly clearing her throat, trying to ignore the way her heart trashes against her ribs.

“There’s no better relationship than the one with your best friend. They know you better than anyone else.”

Lauren looks back at Camila to see her reaction to that, she’s staring at the ceiling with a thoughtful expression.

“Parents supportive?”

Lauren swallows. “Um, for the most part, yeah…except my dad.” She shrugs a bit, feels Camila’s eyes on her. “He doesn’t know yet…about me. He’d cut me off if he knew, which is why I haven’t told him, I guess. I’m not ready to lose him.”

The emotions feel thick and uncomfortable in the back of her throat. She feels Camila squeeze her hand in silent supports.

Red clicks her tongue, “I’m sorry. It’s good you have a supportive girlfriend.”

“Homophobic parent or not, no one would ever be able to tear me away from Lauren,” Camila says and Lauren’s heart expands with warmth, “Love always win.”

And Lauren knows she means it, girlfriend or not.

But in that moment, she really wishes they were girlfriends.

 

++++

 

Camila’s biggest flaw has always been that she’s fall too hard, too fast.

Lauren is hoping for the best but expecting the worst, so she’s hardly surprised when Camila returns from her lunch with Dylan with the conclusion that Dylan is everything good and beautiful in this world.

They get into an argument about it again that snowballs into a fight that has Camila slamming the door into her room and Lauren wanting to scream out of sheer frustration.

It doesn’t end with that lunch, suddenly there are more lunches, then dinners and then they’re suddenly dating within a week and Lauren feels a little bit like dying, especially when she sees Camila with a constant pleased flush in her cheeks, constantly watching romantic movies and listening to love songs—more than she already does which is saying something—and then she’s singing a song in the middle of the night that is doubtlessly inspired by Dylan; and suddenly Lauren no longer finds the late night singing an endearing quirky but _so_ annoying.

They get into a fight about that too, because Lauren wants some fucking sleep after a long day of classes and work and Camila says she can’t help when inspiration strikes.

Lately, they get into a lot of fights.

And Lauren’s hope that Camila and her finally can get together like it was obviously meant to, quickly dwindles.

So when Normani invites her to come see her dance, Lauren does.

There’s apparently a dance studio on campus and Normani is part of this dance group that come together a few times a week for practice—they’re apparently talented enough to join competitions and talent shows.

That day, Lauren discovers she gets extremely turned on by hot girls dancing hip hop.

There’s nothing more hot than Normani in her little crop top and adidas joggers dancing to Missy Elliot’s WTF. She rolls her hips, shakes her ass, runs her fingers through her hair and does some insane footwork—all of it has Lauren breathless and sweating even though she isn’t moving a finger.

At some point, Normani looks directly at her and winks at her as she sticks her tongue out and Lauren is overwhelmed with pure and primitive _want_.

10 minutes later and she has Normani pushed up against the wall of a bathroom stall, her head between her deliciously thick thighs, eagerly eating her out. She’s only ever done this with Lucy before, but she must be doing something right, because Normani has her fingers twisted in Lauren’s hair as she struggles to keep her moans from alerting everyone in the building.

They get off together with their fingers and their tongues in that dirty little bathroom stall and it’s something new and thrilling, it actually makes Lauren forget about Camila for a moment.

Once Lauren leaves the dance studio, she feels relaxed in a way she hasn’t for weeks and with a new phone number burning in her pocket.

 

Normani is snarky, sarcastic and intelligent and Lauren _really_ likes her.

“Nice place,” Normani says as she checks the apartment out, “How do you afford this?”

“Oh, our parents help us cover the rent,” Lauren says, aware of how lucky they’re in that department. “Make yourself comfortable. Do you want something to drink?” 

She looks into the fridge, only to discover that someone— _Camila_ —has finished all her mango nectar. Not that long ago, it wouldn’t have bothered her, but lately, her and Camila haven’t been on the greatest of terms and something like this is something they’ll easily fight about.

She sighs and checks the cabinet. “I have tea. Do you like tea?”

She feels Normani press up behind her, letting Lauren feel all her gorgeous curves. 

“Only if it tastes like your pussy,” She whispers against her ear and Lauren nearly drops the tea bags; she’ll never get used to how incredibly dirty Normani is.

“I’m afraid I can’t guarantee that,” she says and tilts her head to kiss Normani.

Normani kisses her back, sliding her arm down her chest and under her jeans and Lauren gasps surprised when she rubs her between her legs.

Normani is two fingers deep when Camila barges into the kitchen.

Lauren lets out an embarrassed squeak and gets busy pulling her jeans up and her top down but it’s already obvious what they’d been doing with their puffy lips, flushed cheeks and messy hair.

Camila is staring at them with wide eyes, kind of frozen in the door.

“I-I thought you had classes?” Lauren stutters as she struggles to make herself presentable.

“Cancelled,” Camila says and glances at Normani.

Lauren clears her throat and wonders if it’s appropriate for introductions right now, but Camila looks down and mutters, ‘sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt’ before she turns on her heels and disappears into her room.

Lauren can’t explain the tight feeling her chest.

 

++++

 

Things get worse.

Camila begins to spend more and more time with Dylan, skipping classes, turning in assignments too late, coming home in the middle of the night, smelling of cigarettes and liquor—so far, it doesn’t seem to be her own. Thank God.

And Lauren is beginning to think Dylan is dating Camila to spite her. Surely she isn’t imagining the smug smiles he gives her when she catches them together on campus.

Lauren feels powerless because Camila won’t listen to her and lately all they do is fight about petty shit—like who’s turn it is to take the dishes, how Camila should stop leaving her dirty socks all over the apartment and how Lauren uses all the hot water.

They haven’t talked properly for weeks and Lauren is _tired_. She misses their friendship, their heart to hearts at 3 am, their grocery shopping adventures, their movie nights, sharing take-outs that they can’t really afford. She misses Camila in her bed because every night without her feels cold and restless and so lonely.

The day Lauren decides to make amends is of course the day everything gets worse.

She gets home from her evening classes and all she wants is to be friends with Camila again and cuddle with her one the couch, destress by watching one of those stupid romantic comedies Camila’s so fond of.

All she comes home to is a cold apartment. She huffs disappointed and shoots Camila a text, asking her when she’ll be home. She ignores the probability that she’s off with Dylan somewhere.

She doesn’t get a reply, so she sends her several more texts and calls her several times more. She gets a bit worried when she can’t reach her, but she can do nothing but wait for her to come home.

She settles on the couch and puts on Netflix.

She doesn’t know when she falls asleep, all she knows is that she wakes up to the sound of the front door creaking open.

She sits up and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. Camila enters the living room and she doesn’t seem to notice Lauren at first. She throws her keys on the table and then she sees Lauren and jumps startled.

“Jesus, you scared me,” she says with a soft, nervous laugh, her voice heavy and raspy. “Did you fall asleep on the couch?”

Lauren doesn’t say anything. She’s shocked, because Camila’s in the clothes she wore yesterday except a jean jacket that’s too big on her tiny frame—doubtlessly Dylan’s—and her hair is messy, there’s little dark marks on her neck and her lips are rosy and swollen.

Lauren’s heart falls into pieces.

“Camz,” she whispers, “…Don’t tell me…” she wets her dry lips, “D-did you…did you sleep with him?

Camila doesn’t say anything for a moment, but the blush on her cheeks says more than words. “I didn’t plan to,” she says coyly, “One thing led to another and…it just happened.”

Lauren doesn’t know where it comes from but suddenly she’s vibrating with anger. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She snaps and doesn’t feel bad when Camila looks startled. “I can’t fucking believe you! You actually slept with him!”

Camila crosses her arms over her chest, defensively, “What? Why are you so angry?”

“I warned you about him!” Lauren rises to her feet, “I told you he was a bad guy but you don’t listen. You just go and spread your legs for him!”

Camila looks angry now. “Don’t yell at me! You don’t know him! He’s good to me!”

“No, he’s fucking not!” Lauren scoffs, “You’ve been skipping classes, procrastinating on your assignments, staying out late—he’s a bad influence on you!”

Camila’s jaw clenches tight and she looks away. “I’ve got it under control.”

“No, no you don’t. oh my God, you’re so freaking _naïve_!”

“Stop calling me that!” Camila shouts and there are tears in her eyes.

“But you are!” Lauren throws her hand in the air, frustrated. “You literally fall for any and every guy who gives you just a shred of attention, it’s fucking unbelievable. And then you get your feelings hurt over and over again and the worst part? You learn absolutely fucking _nothing_!”

There are hot tears trailing down Camila’s red cheeks and she gives Lauren a deeply hurt and betrayed luck.

“It’s not my fault that I have bad luck in relationships?” she says, her bottom lip wobbling uncontrollably. “I just want to be loved and wanted, is that such a crime?”

Lauren feels guilty but she has to make Camila see reason, “Now that he got what he wanted, he’s going to drop you and you’ll be hurt again.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Camila yells and puts her fingers in her hair.

Lauren goes quiet and watches Camila breathe heavily for several moments.

“All I ask of you is to be supportive of me.” She’s crying now, honest to God sobs that wrecks her petite body, “Is that so goddamn hard? He makes me happy and I can’t even share that with you because all you do lately is be angry at me. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

Lauren kind of wants to die. She reaches for Camila, desperate to fix this but Camila flinches away from her touch.

“Don’t touch me!” She screams.

“Camz—“

“No! Leave me alone!”

She spins on her heels and storms into her room. Lauren winces when she slams the door shut.

Lauren looks up at the ceiling and whispers a soft, ‘fuck me’.

 

++++

 

Lauren experiences her first pride the summer they spend in San Francisco. They see the flyers plastered everywhere one day and while Lauren is hesitant, Camila is insistent.

“It’ll be good for you, Lauren, come on, just try it. I’ll be there with you.”

Lauren relents, because she can’t deny the curiosity.

Camila tries to rob her into buying some fun, colorful clothes for the pride event, but on that point, Lauren is relentless. She settles on a black bralette crop top and white jeans, much to Camila’s disappointment, she on the contrary goes all out; with her rainbow socks, screeching pink skater dress and ‘love always wins’ top and of course, a pair of fairy wings she found at a flea market.

Lauren thinks she looks way gayer than she, the actual lesbian, does.

She does however let Camila paint a rainbow on her cheek, just so she’ll stop pouting so much.

Her first pride is everything she expects and _more_ ; a burst of color, rainbows _everywhere_ , glitter—so much glitter Lauren keeps finding it in her hair days later—people decked out in all kinds of wild customs, Lauren feels super underdressed. But the most important part of it all, is the sense of community, the sense of _belonging_ , feeling welcome and normal and loved by thousands of strangers who can understand the struggle you went through because they’ve experienced it as well.

Lauren doesn’t cry easily, but as gay drag queen holds an inspiring speech of love and acceptance, she feels the tears silently slide down her cheeks.

“Aw, baby,” Camila says and wraps her arms around her tightly, “You’re amazing and I love you.”

Lauren sniffs and smiles, happiness expanding her heart, “Thank you for being you, Camz. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I love you.”

And she really does love Camila more than she loves life as she watches her in her colorful outfit and her butterfly wings, waving the flag, fingers curled tight into Lauren’s.

 

++++

 

Lauren doesn’t cry easily but some things are too hard to bear.

Like the sound of the love of your life being intimate in the next room with a guy that doesn’t deserve her.

As soon as she hears the soft moans and whispers through the paper-thin walls, she scrambles for her ipod and plugs it into her ears, turning up the volume to drown the sounds out.

But even though she can’t hear them, it still doesn’t change the fact of what is happening in the next room. She can’t quite get the image of Camila underneath someone else, small and vulnerable, giving her heart and soul to someone who’s going to crush it mercilessly.

She cries into her pillow that night.

She wakes the next morning from a restless sleep and drags her battered body to the kitchen where she sleepily begins to brew some coffee.

She stares emptily at the fancy coffee machine—a gift from Camila’s dad—when she hears soft footsteps enter the kitchen.

She looks up, fully expecting Camila but she gets Dylan instead.

And like, Lauren can see what she sees in him, he’s good looking, even this early in the morning, with tuffs of black hair falling over sleepy, golden eyes, stubbles lining a jaw that looks like it could slice flesh. He’s shirtless, a nicely toned chest that looks more like genetic blessing than the result of workout. He’s got sick tattoos along his collarbone and down his arms.

“Morning,” he says, voice rough, lips pulling into a half smile.

Lauren scowls at him and pointedly turns away.

He comes up next to her and Lauren’s hands curls into tight fists; fists that are itching to connect with his stupid, smug face.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” He asks as he leans against the counter and sounds like he couldn’t care less—it pisses Lauren off indefinitely.

“Oh, how did you ever figure?” she spits.

She can hear the smirk in his reply, “What did I ever do to you? I mean…other than stealing Camila from you.”

Lauren fixes him with a withering glare. She angrily pours herself coffee and drinks it bitter, just like she feels. 

“I know what you are,” she says.

He rises a brow and slinks closer, hovering over her, “And what is that?” he asks.

Lauren stands her ground and glares at him. She takes her toast out of the toaster and grabs a butter knife.

“A manipulative little fuckboy,” she sneers, “But for some incomprehensible reason, she likes you. And if you hurt her…” she points the butter knife at his chest, warningly, “I will fucking kill you.”

The fucker looks amused as he glances at the butter knife and back up at Lauren.

“I knew it,” he says with a self-satisfied smirk.

Lauren narrows her eyes. “Knew _what_?”

“You’re jealous,” he says and Lauren’s caught off guard so she can’t hide the stunned expression that crosses her face, “You’re jealous because you like her.”

Lauren is honestly speechless; she didn’t know she was that obvious. Dylan looks so smug, she wants to punch him in the nuts.

“Are you…are you with her to spite me because I turned you down?” she asks in disbelief. Sure, fuckboys have fragile egos, but this is taking it too far.

Dylan doesn’t answer. Just smirks, reaches out and curls his finger into a strand of Lauren’s hair. Lauren is two seconds away from decking him when she hears the sound of footsteps approaching. Dylan steps away just as Camila appears in the doorway.

She looks adorably sleepy clad in nothing but Dylan’s shirt and Lauren’s heart hurts.

Camila glances from Dylan to Lauren with a touch of concern. “Morning,” she says.

“Morning, princess,” Dylan says and reaches for her, pulling her into a kiss.

Camila giggles into it and Lauren honestly can’t stomach this, so she turns on her heels and walk out.

 

Normani lives in a dorm that she shares with Ally Brooke. A small firecracker that’s the personification of rainbows and puppies; she’s so nice that Lauren almost believes she’s faking it, because no one is _that_ bubbly.

But she really is an angel, because when Lauren comes with her heart broken in two, she makes her these cookies that taste like magic and instantly makes Lauren feel a little better.

“You gotta move on, boo,” Normani tells her as she strokes her hair. 

And Lauren knows she’s right.

 

But moving on is harder said that done, though Lauren genuinely puts in the effort. She begins hanging out with Normani and Ally more often, avoids Camila and the painful, awkward silences between them.

It’s miserable and there’s a hollow Camila-size space inside of her that no one else can fill.

A week later and there’s a bonfire at the beach, Normani drags her along even though Lauren would rather feel sorry for herself under a bunch of blankets.

“You need to get the fuck over yourself,” Normani tells her. Unlike Ally, who’s soft and sweet, Normani is all about tough love and hard truths.

Lauren knows she’s right so she forces herself into a pair of faded shorts and a crop top and squeezes into Ally’s car.

The party is quite nice actually, the kind of nice, chill vibe with the sound of the bonfire crackling and the ocean in the background. She’s got a cold beer in one hand and Normani’s hand in the other, engaging in some light PDA and she’s beginning to enjoy herself.

Of course, as of lately, life doesn’t let Lauren catch a break.

She sees them when she returns to the bonfire after sneaking off with Normani. They’re sitting by the fire, Camila and Dylan, and Camila is wearing this thin, white beach dress and the way the fire casts shadows across her delicate features has Lauren staring.

She’s brought her guitar and someone begs her to play a song. She looks hesitant and shy at first but then Dylan says something to her that makes her smile and she begins to play. Some drunken dude begins to sing off-key and others laugh and join in. Camila laughs as well and Dylan leans in to kiss her. Then as if he feels Lauren’s eyes burn hole into his head, he looks up. They get eye-contact and he fucking _smirks_ at her.

Lauren’s fingers curls into tight fists and she excuses herself, ignoring Normani calling her name.

She goes to the parking lot and leans against a random car and angrily kicks to a stone. Her body is tense, her fingers are twitching, she wants to sink her claws into someone, preferably Dylan and tear him limb from limb, she’s so _angry_. She can’t believe that a stupid fuckboy has torn her best friend away from her, stolen her away—like, who the fuck gave him the right.

Ten minutes later and she’s managed to calm somewhat down. Then she notices that she isn’t alone as a shadow slinks closer.

It’s Dylan and suddenly her anger wells up again.

He’s wearing that ever-present smug smirk and along with his opened shirt, he looks exactly like the douchebag he is.

“Hey,” he says.

Lauren sneers and if looks could kill, he’d drop dead. “What do you want?”

He laughs, it sounds mockingly in her ears, “Don’t be rude.”

He leans against the car across from the one she’s standing up against and crosses his arms. His eyes slide up and down her frame in a blatant obvious way and he doesn’t even try to hide it.

“Don’t fucking look at me you piece of shit,” she spits, “or I will fucking punch you in your smug face.”

He tilts his face and studies her. “So much anger,” he says, “I really haven’t done anything to deserve it. Don’t blame me for your unrequited, tragic love.”

“You don’t love her,” Lauren blurts. 

Dylan smirks. “I don’t.”

Lauren doesn’t say anything immediately, because she’s stunned. She knew this but she didn’t think he’d admit it so casually.

“She’s tiny and cute and she makes these _great_ sounds in bed,” he licks his lips, “But I’m getting bored.”

Lauren throws a punch before she knows what she’s doing but Dylan catches it before it can smash into his face.

“Feisty,” he says, unruffled, “I like that.”

“Oh fuck you!” She throws her other hand but he catches that one too. 

He spins her around and pins her against the car. He’s too close for comfort and Lauren is practically vibrating with anger. She’s not gonna rest before she beats his sorry ass.

“Now, calm down,” he says, “Let’s talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to talk about with you! Let the fuck go you piece of trash!” She struggles against his restraints but he’s stronger than he looks.

“Be nice,” he chuckles, “I think we can come to some form of…agreement.”

Lauren glares at him, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He stares down at her, his eyes dark, “You can have what you want and I can have what I want.”

Lauren stares at him, pauses her struggling for a bit. “What?”

“I’ll break up with Camila. Let her down easy,” he says and leans close, his warm breath flowing across Lauren’s face, “But only, if you let me have you.”

The fury that invokes in Lauren gives her the strength to forcefully shove him away.

“Are you fucking serious!!” She snarls and shoves him up against the opposite car, her fist curling in his shirt. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t punch you right now!”

He smirks down at her, “You know Camila likes me… _a lot_. If I want to, I can string her along for a while, make her fall deeper and then slowly _destroy_ her until there’s nothing recognizable left.”

His face jerks sharply to the side when Lauren decks him in the chin. She breathes heavily, her other fist still curled tight in his shirt. 

He moves his jaw and looks at her, “Good punch.”

“If you hurt you, I’ll—I’ll—“

“You’ll _what_ , Lauren?” He challenges, pushing her back, “You can’t do anything and you know it.”

The most frustrating part is that he’s right. He has the power to hurt Camila in the worst ways possible, she’s soft and vulnerable and Lauren will be helpless.

He must see the beginnings of defeat on her face, because he swoops in and cradles her chin, tilting it up towards him.

“So what do you say?” He asks, voice low and dangerous, “One night and I’m out your life forever.”

There’s a moment where Lauren genuinely considers it, her lashes flutters and she takes a shaky breath. She knows she’ll do anything for Camila, _Dylan_ knows it; he’s been counting on it and it’s obvious that this all some game to him, has been from the start.

Dylan leans in to kiss her and Lauren is caught between shoving him away and letting it happen.

Then suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, a small blur appears and shoves Dylan so hard he stumbles, loses his balances and crashes ungracefully to the ground.

Lauren stares wide-eyed at Camila who looks angrier than she’s ever seen her before.

“You ok, babe?” Normani pops up at her shoulder, gently touching her arm.

Lauren looks at her confused, then at Camila.

“You scumbag! You lying, shitty scumbag!” Camila cries enraged and then she goes crazy on Dylan, punching and kicking him while he tries to dodge and push her back. He finally clambers to his feet and runs away while Camila scream profanities after him.

Lauren just sort of stands there, stunned.

Camila turns around and as she looks at Lauren, the anger visibly drains from her body and her eyes grow wet.

“Camila—“

“I’m so sorry!” She wails and flings herself at Lauren.

Lauren barely manages to steady them so they don’t end up on the ground.

“I’m sorry, Lauren,” Camila cries into her shoulder, gripping her for dear life, “I-I heard what he said, you were right I should’ve listened to you but I didn’t want to be wrong, I didn’t want to, you know how stubborn I am and-and I’m sorry, I ruined our friendship all because of a stupid boy who never loved me—“

“Camila, Camila, Camila!” Lauren grabs Camila’s face between her palms and forces her to stop talking, “It’s ok. You didn’t know. It’s ok.”

Camila’s face crumbles and she collapses back into her, her body shaking with her sobs.

Lauren closes her eyes and thinks— _finally, you’re back in my arms_.

 

That night, they have a long, healthy talk, cuddled together under one blanket on Camila’s bed. There’s a lot of tears, mostly Camila’s and a lot of ‘sorry’s’, also mostly Camila’s and when they go to bed that night, tangled so thoroughly into each other that it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, Lauren knows everything is going to be alright.

Camila is surprisingly not as heartbroken about Dylan as Lauren thought she would be and she expects things to go back to normal, except they don’t. Camila is acting off and at first, it’s barely noticeable and Lauren thinks nothing of it, but then Camila avoids her and she can’t ignore it anymore.

A Saturday morning, she walks into the kitchen to the smell of burnt food and Camila obviously panicking by the stove. Her long hair is pulled up in a messy bun and she’s wearing shorts and a ratty tee, that looks suspiciously a lot like Lauren’s.

Lauren muffles a laugh and sneaks up behind her, peeking over her shoulder, “What are you doing, Camz?”

Camila jumps about a mile in the air with a hilarious squeak and nearly fall over nothing.

“Hey there,” Lauren laughs and steadies her friend. “You good?”

Camila tears away from her, blushing furiously for some reason and there’s some unidentifiably food staining her cheek and shirt.

“You scared me, Lauren! Don’t do that!”

Lauren laughs again, “I’m sorry.” She turns to the stove where’s something is burning in the saucepan. She turns off the stove and removes the saucepan from the heat. “How many times have we talked about you cooking something other than pasta? We can’t afford the apartment burning to the ground.”

“I’m sorry,” Camila whines, “I was trying to make breakfast for you, egg benedict—your favorite—and I was sure I had it right, I found a Gordon Ramsey recipe but something went wrong and now it’s all ruined.”

Lauren smiles, “That’s sweet of you, but leave the cooking to me. You’ve got something…” she wets her thumb and reach for Camila so she can dry off whatever it is she has on her cheek. 

To her surprise, Camila flinches away, “No, no, it’s ok, I got it,” she stutters and rubs her cheek with the back of her hand.

Lauren frowns and approaches her. Camila stumbles back.

Lauren stops and they stare at each other.

“Camila, what the fuck?”

“What?” Camila plays dumb and looks everywhere but at Lauren.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing!”

“Camila,” Lauren says impatiently and approaches her carefully. “You’re being weird.”

Camila laughs and backs away until her back hits the wall. “I’m not. What are you talking about?”

“ _Camila_!” Lauren exclaims, exasperated.

“Do you like me?” Camila blurts and then she literally squeezes her eyes tightly shut as if she’s bracing herself for impact.

Lauren frowns, “Of course I like you? What even—“

“No, no,” Camila whines and opens her eyes, “Do you _like_ me?”

Lauren is about to roll her eyes but then she realizes what Camila is asking her. She stares at her and Camila looks back at her, wide-eyed and vulnerable.

Lauren swallows down the panic crawling up her throat. She clears her throat awkwardly.

“Oh,” she says, “Um…where exactly is this coming from?”

Camila looks down and plays with a loose string from her shirt, “I heard what he was saying to you…Dylan…I heard it…um, I don’t know what he meant but…” she trails off, her eyes glancing up at Lauren.

When Lauren doesn’t respond immediately, Camila exclaims, “I’m sorry,” a nervous laugh, “I’m so stupid, this is stupid, silly me,” she makes a grimace, “always spouting off stuff that doesn’t make sense, haha, just don’t um…forget about it maybe? I shouldn’t ever open my mouth—“

“I do like you.”

Camila snaps her mouth shut and her eyes grows wider if possible. She stares at Lauren, speechless, color burning her cheeks.

Lauren swallows thickly. She always thought that her confession would happen differently, but now there is no going back.

She leans back against the kitchen table, “He knew he could get to me through you. He knew I’d do anything for you…because I love, Camila. I’ve loved you for a long time.”

It feels like a weight has dropped off her shoulders, freeing her. She realizes that she would never have been able to move on without confessing, because the tiniest possibility of Camila returning her feelings would hold her back.

Lauren can’t decipher the look on Camila’s face, so she continues, “I don’t want you to feel guilty and I don’t expect you to feel the same. Nothing has to change between us.”

Camila stares down at her feet and takes a deep breath. She looks up at Lauren, eyes tender, “What if I want things to change?”

Lauren stares at her stunned and blurts an intelligent respond, “What…”

Camila’s cheeks burn a fierce red and she looks shy and adorable.

“I like you too.”

Lauren blinks several times. “What? Wait, wait, pause!” she holds her hands up and takes a deep breath, “Since when?”

Camila shrugs a bit, “Uh, I think since San Francisco? Or I realized it there, might have happened earlier…but San Francisco changed a lot for me…it was like a…spiritual trip…I learned a lot about myself.”

Lauren’s heart beats so hard, the blood rushing through her veins, she can barely breathe. There are so many emotions going through her right now, most prominently, _happiness_ , because holy shit, this is really happening and Camila _likes_ her.

Camila looks anxious when she takes too long to respond, “Please, say something,” she says weakly.

“I want to kiss you,” Lauren blurts, surprising herself.

Camila looks surprised as well but she grins, “What are you waiting for?”

It’s all the permission Lauren needs and she surges forward, knocking Camila back against the wall as she kisses her, full of passion and urgency. She wraps her arms around Camila’s waist and holds her close, feeling every inch of her skin burning.

Unlike their first kiss, there’s nothing innocent about this, no giggling, no clumsy lips and clanking teeth—it’s pure fire.

And then Camila does something that makes a rush of heat settle between Lauren’s legs. She moans. And Lauren moans back.

Their lungs burn for air and they pull back, gazing into each other’s eyes.

“Wow,” Camila says breathless and Lauren has to agree. “I should’ve known from the beginning. It was always supposed to me you and me together.”

Lauren laughs against Camila’s lips. “Took you long enough to realize.”

And then she kisses her again because she can.

 

+++

 

They tell each other, they love each other for the first time when they have sex, also for the first time, three days after getting together.

It starts with them cuddling and watching Netflix when Camila makes a joke about _’netflix and chill’_ and things kind of escalates after that.

Lauren already knows everything there is to know about Camila—her fears, dreams, hopes, her love for romantic comedies, her idealistic heart, how well she sings and plays guitar, how beautifully she can weave words together, her endless capacity for love. She’s watched her grow from a little girl in a fluffy pink dress, to a young woman with a heart of gold.

That day, she learns just what makes Camila whine, what makes her gasp and her back arch, what makes her moan and scream. And boy, Camila is _loud_ in bed, Lauren properly shouldn’t be as surprised as she is.

They’re both nervous and awkward at first, but then Lauren cracks a joke and they laugh and everything is easy as it’s always been with them.

“I love you!” Camila screams as Lauren makes her come with three fingers up her cunt and her tongue on her clit.

Lauren’s face jerks up, lips slicked with Camila and stares wide-eyed at her.

“Say that again,” she pleads.

At first, Camila looks confused and dazed from her orgasm but then she smiles and pulls Lauren down for a sweet kiss.

“I love you.”

Lauren’s heart grows bigger than her ribcage can contain and she kisses Camila over and over again.

“I love you too. I love you so much.”

Lauren makes her come three more times, because Camila is deliciously sensitive.

She tells Lauren that she’s never come that many times in a row and Lauren is smug and proud of herself.

 

+++

 

Camila is 9 years old when she becomes obsessed with weddings after watching too many telenovelas depicting the perfect, fairy tale wedding; and she begins planning her own future wedding.

Lauren is beyond frustrated whenever she wants to play outside but all Camila is interested in is gluing cut-outs from wedding magazine into her ‘wedding book’.

“I want my wedding to be perfect,” she says, eyes bright.

“You’re 9 years old,” Lauren replies dryly, “You won’t be getting married for a _long_ time.” 

Camila shrug her small shoulder, “Abuela says it’s good to always be prepared.”

“I don’t think she mean this,” Lauren gestures to her ‘wedding book’ where she’s fawning over a wedding dress.

Lauren can’t talk some sense into Camila, but she’s confident this phase will pass just as the phase with minions passed. Hopefully soon.

“I want to have a practice wedding,” Camila says one day when they’re at Lauren’s home.

At first, Lauren thinks she’s joking and she laughs but as it appears, she’s very much serious. Lauren is strongly reluctant at first, however, Camila talks her into it of promises of it being ‘fun’. Once she’s talked Lauren into it, she goes to ask Lauren’s mom if she will play the priest.

Her mother is entertained. “First the kiss then this?”

All Camila has to do is clasp her fingers under her chin and spill her eyes wide open for Lauren’s mother to cave.

And that’s how they get fake-married at the age of nine.

Camila is ecstatic. She wears this pretty, white dress that she wore for her latest birthday and Lauren’s mother helps her set up her hair and even allows a smidge of lipgloss on the lips. 

“Why do I have to be the groom?” Lauren complains. She’s wearing a white t-shirt and dark pants which is the closest they get to a suit.

“Because, only one of us can be the bride,” Camila explains in a ‘duh’ tone like it’s so obvious that the bride has to be her.

They have the wedding in the backyard of the Jauregui household. Lauren watches Camila walk towards her in her pretty dress and huge, happy smile, clutching a bouquet of fake flowers.

Her mother snaps picture the whole time.

When Camila comes to stand in front of her, Lauren grins back—Camila’s grin is too infectious not to.

And because she’s Camila, she’s prepared some wedding vows.

“You’re my best friend,” she says, “I promise to treat you right and love you forever and ever.”

Lauren smiles wide, “I promise to learn how to make blueberry pancakes so I can make it for you every morning.”

Lauren’s mother _aaaws_ in the background and Camila’s eyes widen a bit.

“Wow. Really?”

Lauren nods eagerly, “Really.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

They slip cheap, plastic rings over each other’s fingers and kiss on the cheek.

Later, when they’re up in Lauren’s room, they continue the role-play, but this time, Camila kisses her on the mouth for the second time.

 

+++

 

13 years later and Lauren can conclude that dreams do come true.

She’s 22 years old and today is the day she’s marrying her best friend. She watches her soon to be wife, walking down the aisle, looking like something out of her wildest dreams, gorgeous beyond description and Lauren can see the tears in Camila’s eyes, glittering like diamonds in her eyes and she can feel the sting in her own.

“I should’ve seen this coming,” her mother told her in the dressing room while she’d been helping Lauren get ready, “That pretend wedding was foreshadowing.”

She proposed to Camila a few months ago on the playground back in their hometown where they’d first met. She’d built her a sandcastle and placed the ring on the highest tower. Camila had broken out in tears and screamed yes, before Lauren even had a chance to respond.

As she looks into Camila’s eyes, she knows that she’s the luckiest woman in the world. It’s not many that are lucky enough to marry their childhood best friend, it’s not many that find someone who knows them better than themselves, who’s been with them through all the stages of their life, the good, the bad, the awkward, who protected you from bullies without knowing you and who continued to protect you no matter the cost, someone who messily patched you up after you scraped your knees after falling down from the bike and wiped your tears away, who tried hard to make you soup when you were sick even though they knew they couldn’t cook, who never let you hate yourself for the way you were born, who pushed you to go to your first lesbian bar, your first pride, who have loved you unconditionally through so many years.

The “I do’ comes easy, natural, like the words had been sitting on her tongue for ages, waiting for the day they could fall from her lips and tie her to the woman of her dreams.

When they kiss, Camila tastes of promises and future and endless amounts of _happiness_.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: kordelicious
> 
> wattpad: kordelicious


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